Since Glenn Maxwell walked to the middle in Delhi at the end of last October during the World Cup, he has batted for Australia in five ODIs and four T20Is. Nine innings, four not outs, four centuries, 597 runs at an average of 119.
Monster figures already, then factor in the strike rate of 186 – one player scoring north of 11 runs an over on his own. In a way, his 120 from 55 balls against West Indies in Adelaide on Sunday was the most perfect of the lot.
Even for a player who melds batting with circus arts, this streak has been unrealistic. Not just for the numbers but the context, the way that each high point has grown out a low that should have made it impossible.
It was little over a year ago that Maxwell snapped his leg in half so badly that his doctors had serious doubts about his professional career. The injury caused setbacks right up until the World Cup and still gives him trouble now.
Heading into the World Cup group game against Netherlands, Maxwell’s 2023 had been made up of a lack of confidence in his body, a scattered half dozen games, no runs to speak of and a golden duck in his last hit. Forty balls later he had the fastest World Cup hundred in history. An important 41 followed in the high-scoring win over New Zealand.
Two good games, then the next setback: the fall that split his scalp open on a concrete path through a golf course. Concussion, a week out and a game missed, people blaming him for recklessness or drunkenness where there was neither.
Maxwell’s bounceback was absurd, that all-time epic against Afghanistan – 201 not out in the Mumbai humidity to rescue a lost cause with semi-final qualification on the line.
The cramping from that innings hampered him for weeks and he was little required with the bat in the knockouts. Yet, after the World Cup final, Maxwell still found the reserves mentally and physically to score 104 not out from 48 balls in a T20I against India that none of the title-winning squad should have been asked to play. He turned another doomed chase into a win.
So to the present, after a second golf course mishap that this time was his doing: a hot day in the sun with not enough water and too much beer, leading to that ratio’s likely consequence. Winding up in the back of an ambulance and on the front of the newspaper due to bad social decisions would be a particular humiliation, especially having scared people before the more innocuous cause of dehydration was known.
A different player might have been too sheepish to express themselves on the field but this one only fleeces bowlers.
Quintessentially Maxwell, the innings had to start with snarls of frustration – even as one of the most criticised Australian players, nobody is more routinely dissatisfied with Maxwell than Maxwell. Annoyance as he didn’t find the contact or the gaps he wanted, even through a period as brief as four runs from six balls that is a normal start for anyone else.
Then Maxwell clicked, something slotting into place just as he slotted the first of his eight sixes, dropping to one knee to strike the spinner Akeal Hosein into the top tier of the eastern stand at Adelaide Oval.
From there, it was perfection. Plenty of players score quickly but Maxwell is different in his range. He doesn’t only set up on the back foot and baseball it, though he did just that to the West Indies’ fastest, Alzarri Joseph. He doesn’t only stride forward and hit straight, though Joseph got one of those too. He’s not just the switch-hit that sent Hosein for another hundred-metre journey.
His wrist-flicks produce his devastating timing. Bowl leg side of the pitch and he bends his back knee, turns that foot straight and angles his hip down towards the off side, creating space to get around the line of the ball. It looks awkward, like a stance that could not produce power, until you see the ball fly over backward square leg. Andre Russell wore that. Width outside off and he reaches for the ball with every sinew in his arms, down on one knee at full extension by the time he made contact with Romario Shepherd’s ball. It still cleared the extra cover rope.
Three sixes before his first four but his placement along the ground is the most exceptional. Russell’s yorker, on the money, angled at middle and off, destined for the woodwork, except Maxwell interposes some other timber, the bat vertical and with no follow through, no visible drive, yet instead of being defended the ball skims through backward point for four. Deliberate, confounding. West Indies captain Rovman Powell could only shrug: any ball they bowl, he said understatedly, “he tend to have a shot for it.”
T20I hundreds are rare. All of Australia’s women players combined: five centuries. All Australia’s men except one: five centuries. Glenn Maxwell: five centuries. The only player in the world with as many is Rohit Sharma and that’s from 50% more matches.
The great shame remains that Maxwell has never had a proper go at Test cricket and never once in Australia. It may not have worked – but for a national setup to have such a singular talent, yet never try it out? That’s an indictment on the courage and imagination of a dozen years of selectors.
The current national setup is the most welcoming to Maxwell, his approach no longer treated with suspicion. He is backed unyieldingly. He is a better player for having that security from his team, captains, coach. Yet still only in short games.
Imagine if that backing extended to Tests across a couple of years. Maxwell has turned 35 but is playing the best cricket of his life. He could still do quite literally anything.
