For most of the evening, Glenn Phillips looked like the safest investment on the field.

He batted with clarity. Against spin, anything too full was driven straight, anything too short pulled with control. He finished as New Zealand's top-scorer without appearing to force the pace.

With the ball, he delivered a crucial breakthrough. Harry Brook looked to make room but Phillips, bowling his offbreaks from round the wicket, drifted the ball away. It meant the shot travelled much straighter into the hands of long-off instead of much squarer, where Brook's intention had been to clear the 62-metre boundary.

Minutes later, Phillips sprinted in from the deep and dived forward to take a low catch inches above the turf. It was sharp, instinctive, and got rid of Jacob Bethell, who was set and posing a threat.

It felt like the making of one of those complete T20 nights for Phillips, the kind where one player seems to sit at the centre of the action and the game appears to move in rhythm with him. Runs, wickets, catches. Influence in every phase.

Then came the inflection point.

England needed 43 from three overs. The decision to hand Phillips the ball was not casual. It was a call built on evidence gathered through the evening. The pitch had rewarded spin. England had bowled 16 overs of it in the first innings, the most they have sent down in a T20I, and had even turned to Will Jacks for the 18th over earlier in the night, when he removed Phillips. The match had already shown how a part-time offspinner could tilt its direction.

With two right-handers at the crease, Phillips' offbreaks would spin into them and, in theory, invite hits to the longer part of the ground, where batters had been caught in the deep. The dimensions mattered. The surface mattered. The match-ups mattered. It was the sort of decision that feels right in the moment because it has logic layered into it.

There were fewer obvious alternatives than hindsight suggests. Ish Sodhi had already conceded 21 in two overs. The seamers had been used in defined bursts and had not found exaggerated assistance at the death in the previous match on this strip. In fact, Sri Lanka had bowled three of the last four overs with pace and paid the price, with Santner putting the bowlers to the sword over the short boundary.

Santner's thinking was about control and geometry, about forcing England to hit against the turn and into the bigger side of the ground, about backing the bowler who had influenced the night in multiple ways already.

"Yeah, I guess the toss-up was whether you bowled seam at some stage," the New Zealand captain later said. "In the first innings, obviously, Brookie (Brooks) in England bowled a lot of seam at the end as well, and I guess it probably wasn't doing as much as it was the other night, where we bowled a lot of spin. It was still obviously a challenging wicket, but yeah, you can always look at those things in hindsight."

For a brief moment, it felt aligned with the script. Rehan Ahmed, playing his first-ever match in a T20 World Cup, charged down the track and wasn't quite to the pitch of the ball, but managed to clear long-on. It was not just six runs. It shifted the mood. Will Jacks sensed it.

"I think that ball that Rehan hit, a six-second ball, that gave me energy as well," Jacks said. "And I thought, right, we've got a chance here. And then obviously I finished over 6-4-4, and we were on. I think small moments like that is so important and not just the runs but the way it happens, hitting a big six and really showing the bowler that you're on here and we believe that we can win this is really crucial and from that moment I think the mindset changed," Jacks said.

22 runs came off Phillips' over. 6, 4, 4 to close it from Jacks. The required rate shrank. The belief grew.

The defining image of Phillips's night is not the dismissal of Brook or the catch to remove Bethell. Or of looking untroubled even against the guile of Adil Rashid on a slow pitch assisting big turn. Instead, it of Jacks standing tall and hitting straight, once over the larger boundary and again with enough conviction to make field settings feel secondary.

"I think as soon as he came in, we needed 12, maybe 13 and over, so we knew we had to put some impetus into the game," Jacks said. "Even though there was a big side, we knew off spin to us was a good matchup and we had to take a risk there, knowing Santner was probably going to bowl the next over and it might be harder. And then that 19th over, the second-to-last ball, I said to him, I'll get a single here and you have a free hit. And that six, obviously, needing five off the last over. It's pretty much won us the game and that's brilliant.

"That 18th over was a massive turning point, but you still have to do a lot of work to get to that point," Jacks added.

Santner did not retreat from the logic. "GP [Glenn Phillips] bowled a good length and he charged and he wasn't quite there, but great swing of the bat, goes for six," he said. "And then you're kind of thinking, is that the option or should I change or with the big boundary it was still trying to get hit to that side and then you could probably think about changing the field a little bit but it's again it's even Jacksey absolutely smoking that one just for six over the big side.

"On another day, that could be called or that's the options we want them to take. Obviously, square was the bigger boundary versus straight. So I think as a bowler, it's how do you keep getting it square versus down the ground," Santner added.

Tim Seifert, who stood behind the stumps and watched the over unfold, put it bluntly: "You've got to take your hats off. One of them went straight over that big boundary. Sometimes you've got to tip your head."

For 37 overs, Glenn Phillips had influenced the match in small, decisive ways. In the 38th, one over, built on a decision that made sense at the time, was met by three shots that were struck cleaner. In T20 cricket, that is often the difference.