Glenn Phillips was handed his debut cap as Rajasthan Royals went with a rejigged squad in their IPL 2021 encounter against Chennai Super Kings on Sunday.
Rajasthan made four changes to their playing eleven. Shivam Dube, Glenn Phillips, Akash Singh and Mayank Markande come in for Liam Livingstone, Mahipal Lomror, Riyan Parag and Chris Morris.
Phillips, the 24-year-old, who has featured in a lone Test and 25 T20Is for New Zealand, recently played in The Hundred for Welsh Fire. He had come in the Royals camp as a replacement for Jos Buttler, who pulled out of the tournament.
The right-hander has gathered 2988 runs at 32.1 with a strike rate of 142 in 103 T20 games. This year, he has scored 867 runs at 36.12 at a strike rate of 150.52 in 29 T20 games.
On signing with Royals ahead of the UAE leg, Phillips had said, “At first, I knew there were other players ahead of me, and then with players dropping out, this opportunity came about.
"There were a couple of other teams who wanted me, but the fact that I was playing for the Barbados Royals already, made sense for me to go with the Rajasthan Royals. I felt it was the right decision to stay with the same franchise.”
Phillips had also said that he thinks the conditions in the UAE will be better than what he experienced during the CPL, where he donned the Barbados Royals jersey.
"I’m actually relishing coming over to the UAE as the pitches will be a bit quicker compared to what I’ve been playing on currently, so that will be a nice change.”
