Avalanche is a term Glenn Phillips will be aware of. Always interested in other sports, Phillips was a big professional wrestling fan growing up. He was a John Cena fan, and even had a similar crew cut. A DJ at one of the grounds he played at must have known of his fondness for Cena, and played Cena's entry music "The Time Is Now" when Phillips walked out. It even reached Cena, who posted a photo of Phillips' celebrating a hundred on his Instagram without any caption or context.
As things do on social media, it blew up big time. Phillips ended up keeping the song. At every New Zealand ground now, he walks out to Cena's song, which samples M.O.P's "Ante Up". The krrrrrr you hear before "yap a dude" the vocals is from Ante Up. It is kind of fitting because there is no bigger sign of antes being up than Phillips on the field.
Phillips has been upping the ante all series, but he has been up against a side that has been setting benchmarks in T20 cricket. In the terminology of Cena's sport, India have been kicking out of Phillips' finisher again and again. He scores 82 not out off 40, including a last-ball four as a left-hand batter, to take New Zealand to their highest total against India, but India chase it down with relative ease. On a used surface two nights later, Phillips scores 70 off 43, New Zealand think they have India pinned, but their last recognised pair gets their shoulder up at 2.9 seconds.
In wrestling matches, only super dominant wrestlers are allowed to kick out of a finisher. Equals do it on special occasions to underscore the importance of that match. And when the finisher alone won't do, you hit the avalanche version of your finisher for extra impetus. That is, you up the ante and hit a more spectacular version of your finisher from the top of the turnbuckle for extra impact.
If in a similar predicament as Phillips and New Zealand have found themselves against India, Cena would lift his opponent onto his shoulder, climb the turnbuckle and hit an Avalanche Attitude Adjustment from there. At Eden Park, Phillips hit an avalanche century to finally get the better of India, only for the second time in 10 attempts in 2026.
On most occasions when this Indian team wins the toss and puts you in in night games, your batters have to post a total well above par to win. Phillips took New Zealand where no team, even in domestic cricket, has ever been: past 250. "I don't think you've ever got enough to feel comfortable with this side," Phillips said when asked if he ever thought during his 107 off 49 that the job had been done. "You need a ton of runs to even have a sniff of beating India."
It was lovely clean hitting from a batter who famously struggles to sit still but has, with bat in hand, developed his game to the kind of stillness you associate neither with him nor wicketkeepers. Of course he is no longer a wicketkeeper, a job he took on to stay in the team. Now he commands one in all formats based purely on his batting. The offspin is a bonus.
At his home ground, Eden Park, in front of a crowd not quite in his corner, Phillips used the short straight boundaries without getting obsessed with them. Not a lot of premeditation, not much moving around or ramping, his one innovation is when he turns into a left-hand batter, and even then he ends up making the shot look like an orthodox one from a left-hand batter. During this innings, though, he had an actually left-hand batter, Michael Bracewell, also known as The Beast, playing some of those incredible shots himself in his 65 off 25.
"That felt like a bit of a whirlwind," Phillips said. "Yeah, it was a lot of fun, Also being at the other end while The Beast was going bananas was fantastic. Look, obviously crazy things happen at Eden Park all the time.
"For us to be able to put that sort of score on the board today, I guess it'll give us confidence going forward that we can get a score of that size. You know, it's our first time being up in that 250 range, I think, or at least in the time that I can remember. So who knows, maybe that's something that we can take in, I guess, to move forward with."
You have no choice, Glenn, but to move forward with that. With the kind of pitches being rolled out for T20 cricket, with the improvement in hitting quality all over the world, with dew, with batters more agreeable to shifting from batting to hitting, this kind of batting is the future of the T20 game. A little like in professional wrestling where wrestlers agree to having opponents kick out from their finishers much more often than when Phillips used to watch it as a kid. It calls for more avalanches. Phillips knows his time is now.