All-rounder refuses to curb his enthusiasm
Maxwell not sorry for breaking 'rules'
It’s not just that thicket of a beard, sideshow of never-before-attempted batting improvisations and almost childlike delight in simply playing the sport that he loves that sets Glenn Maxwell apart from many of his cricket contemporaries.
There’s also the manic refusal to spend his rare down time sitting down, as he showed yesterday when he completed 18 holes of golf at Royal Harare and then immediately set off on a four-hour safari on which he encountered lions, giraffe, zebras and black rhinoceros almost within touching range.
And then there’s his preparedness to provide an honest insight into the unconventional way he approaches his cricket.
A methodology that has earned him a near religious following in India after taking out MVP honours in the most recent IPL, and a public rebuke from his national coach last summer for squandering his seemingly boundless talent at a time that his team most needed it.
As a case in point, it’s long been regarded as taboo for batsmen to admit they pre-empt strokes, particularly in limited-overs cricket, because selecting the shot you’re going to play before the bowler releases the ball is a breach of the fundamentals that junior coaches preach.
But ask Maxwell just how he goes about those audacious shots – like the one against Zimbabwe last Monday when he aimed an ambitious reverse slog-sweep (see in below video) that not only cleared the infield but the rope marking the longest boundary at the expansive Harare Sports Club ground – and he tells you with disarming candour it was always headed that way.
Regardless of where the ball initially pitched.
“I suppose with the way the field's gone (with one less outfielder allowed) and with the situation of the games that I generally come in, you can afford to pre-empt a little bit,” Maxwell said during a break in the current tri-series that features South Africa and host nation Zimbabwe.
“When the off side field is up like it was a bit (against Zimbabwe) I was trying to go mainly off side and luckily enough I got a few balls in the area as well, so it's about playing to the field when I'm out there and trying to expose any weaknesses I can see in their field.”
And the almost yorker-length delivery soon after that with which he distorted both physics and geometry by sending it screaming, along the ground, to the square leg fence?
“I actually got that pretty well,” he says with a satisfied grin.
“I was hoping for something a bit straighter and I'd obviously already made up my mind I wanted to go through the leg side because it was a shorter boundary and I thought if I got any sort of bat on it I'd be able to get it for four.”
The risk with deciding you’re going to pull out one of your party tricks before you know who’s in the room is that you can end up with an entire omelette on your dial.
Which, in Maxwell’s experience, invariably leads to a chorus of incredulity from lounge rooms the world over followed by a groundswell of frustration along the lines of “why didn’t he play a normal cricket shot and just hit it for four?”.
“I've had that a few times,” he explained unapologetically.
“But I think it's a calculated risk sometimes because you generally get a good idea of what the bowler's going to bowl.
“And if they do bowl anything outside of that, it's obviously a double-bluff, which you can't really afford to do in one-day cricket just because of the field restrictions.
“With four guys out it makes it extremely difficult to defend.
“So generally you have a pretty good idea where the ball is going, depending on the field, so you've got to go with that I think.
“I've also got quite fast hands that means I feel like I can turn the ball from different areas, so I try and use that to my advantage wherever possible and in one-day cricket you can use those advantages and really dominate teams.”
For anyone of mortal talents, this could quite easily be mistaken for conceit.
But Maxwell is quite blatantly neither, and explains that his capacity and preparedness to attempt high-risk, higher embarrassment potential shots like that slog sweep of which Brian Lara would have been proud is, like so many adult traits, a product of his childhood.
When, as a youngster at his Melbourne primary school, he was told he would be forbidden from playing cricket in the schoolyard during lunch and recess breaks unless he agreed to bat left-handed.
That was because his refusal to surrender his wicket to any of his exasperated peers meant he occupied the batting crease, unmovable and defiantly unmoved, for a full week before the third and fourth umpires got involved.
“I just didn't want to get out and so I got banned from playing primary school cricket with my mates,” said Maxwell, who jokingly likened the practice to a form of “schoolyard bullying”.
“So I played basketball for a while and stayed away from it.”
Until a compromise solution, that he could return if he batted left-handed, was agreed upon.
“It’s something you have to practice I suppose, and dad always kept pushing me to keep trying to do new things and he was a good coach for me when I was younger,” he said.
“I think it's pretty natural, I've always played like that growing up and I've relied on timing.
“When I was a young guy I wasn't very big so as I've grown up and got a bit stronger I've been able to play a few more powerful shots and that's helped me in the one day arena.”
And while Maxwell has tried pretty much everything during his limited-overs career, except perhaps for the new ‘mystery’ shot he’s been working on and revealed to cricket.com.au earlier this month, there is one glaring gap in his portfolio.
In almost 50 ODI and T20 appearances for his country, he has yet to post a century.
His best chance to date came and went against Zimbabwe on Monday when, having toyed with the host nation’s bowlers like a cat with a mortally wounded mouse to reach 93 from less than 50 balls faced, he tried to launch a drive on to the adjoining road and was caught from the miscued result.
“It was a bit strange because it was probably the first almost normal, conventional shot I tried to hit - a straight drive,” Maxwell recalled without any outward show of regret.
“So I walked off thinking maybe I should have reverse swept it... off side (field) was up again.
“We had a team meeting afterwards where we talk about guys making hundreds, and the way I play they're not too disappointed if I get out in the 90s because that means I've done my job.
“So I think the guys who get hundreds are supposed to be in the top four, and with me, Steve Smith and James Faulkner it’s our role to finish the innings off.
“Hopefully all of us can keep doing that for Australia for a long time.”