Maxwell's undying Test dream underpins new book

While the white-ball wizardry that helped Australia pull off one of cricket's most improbable triumphs stands as his defining moment, Glenn Maxwell has revealed how it is in fact his unfulfilled Test dream that has been the major driving force in his career.

Maxwell's first book, titled The Showman, charts the star allrounder's comeback from a traumatic broken leg to the miracle Mumbai double-century during Australia's unlikely 2023 World Cup run.

His account also gives his side of the story on his strained relationship with Australia coach Justin Langer, run-ins with Virat Kohli (since resolved) and Virender Sehwag (unresolved), as well as the extent of his mental health challenges that first surfaced when he was a teenager playing club cricket in England.

But the underlying theme of the book that dips into the many dramatic moments of the South Belgrave boy’s 14-year professional career is his burning desire to have a meaningful impact in Test cricket.

Never having the chance to pull on the Baggy Green in Australia is an ongoing source of frustration, although he reveals how he nearly played the 2012 Boxing Day Test when Shane Watson passed a morning-of-day-one fitness test on a calf that he then re-injured hours into the match.

Maxwell even explains how his aborted move from Victoria to New South Wales in 2016 had been orchestrated following the encouragement of Cricket Australia's then high performance boss Pat Howard and with the express intention of advancing his Test case.

After his breakthrough century in Ranchi in 2017, Maxwell gives his account of a sequence of frustrations that derailed his Test career and then coincided with one of his darkest chapters.

Channeling his disappointment over selectors dropping him only three Tests after his breakthrough ton against India, Maxwell had the best Sheffield Shield season of his Victorian career in 2017-18, hitting 707 runs at 50.50, highlighted by a monster 278 against NSW.

It was enough to win him a call-up for the final Test of the 2018 South Africa tour when three players were suspended. While he was relegated to drinks carrier for that Test, Maxwell was convinced that, in the ensuing months, "it really did look like I could now make a go of being a Test player".

Maxwell details his frustrations at missing the two-Test series against Pakistan in the UAE in October 2018 and says his relationship with Langer came under heavy strain, notably in early 2020 when Maxwell missed a white-ball series with an elbow ailment. That came during his comeback from his 2019 mental-health break, for which Maxwell had credited Langer for making possible.

It was another injury, however, that would end up having a greater impact on Maxwell's career.

For the first time, he names the close friend who fell on him at a 50th birthday as Ben Waterman, a former teammate of Maxwell's at his Premier side Fitzroy-Doncaster and who had been devastated to have left him in need of an ambulance late on a Saturday night in Melbourne’s southern suburbs.

"Try to imagine grabbing a fistful of Paddle Pop sticks and bending them to breaking point – when I think back to that night, it’s this visceral sound that haunts me," writes Maxwell.

"I had broken bones before, it’s an occupational hazard as a sportsman, but this one was different. It was the most painful experience of my life.

"My screams were loud and desperate. My leg was in bits, my ankle destroyed, bad enough that doctors were quietly bracing my wife for the even more traumatic possibility that my left foot would need to be amputated."

Maxwell had been close to playing in each of Australia's two Tests in Sri Lanka only months earlier, admitting he had become emotional in front of Langer’s replacement Andrew McDonald when the coach told him he was likely to make the squad.

But with his snapped left fibula, not only was his shot at playing in a defining Border-Gavaskar Trophy tour in early 2023 torpedoed, but his prospects of playing cricket again at all were in danger. 

The book details his laborious rehabilitation, coinciding with his early days as a father to his son Logan, and culminates in his extraordinary innings against Afghanistan at the Wankhede Stadium and Australia rudely interrupting India's coronation as World Cup champions.

Both of which came after another Maxwell mishap, less serious but equally headline-worthy, when he was concussed in Ahmedabad after falling off the back of a golf cart, with Mitch Marsh identified as the driver.

"We piled into the golf carts, and with not many available that meant two passengers in the seats, two standing on the back," says Maxwell of the incident that occurred during a team golf day before a match against England.

"Our cart had Bison (Marsh) driving with Stoin (Marcus Stoinis) up front, and Kez (Alex Carey) on the back with me, on a straight path from the club to the coach.

"When we were nearly to our destination, Bison pulled a u-turn. He and Stoin had some tunes going and were loving their singalong, so they wanted to buy themselves time for their song to finish.

"There was nobody at fault. They were just having a good time and I guess I wasn’t paying attention."

The Australians would end up back at that same Ahmedabad golf course, hitting balls at the World Cup trophy in the warm glow of their win over India thanks to a series of tactical masterstrokes in the decider.

But Maxwell's crowning moment had come less than fortnight before, in his first match back after his golf-cart misfortune, when he scored an astonishing 201no in what has been described as the best ODI innings of all-time.

Again, a physical handicap was at the forefront of the tale, with Maxwell detailing the extent of the cramps that all but immobilised him, drawing on the drills he had performed with his childhood batting coach Richard Clifton that saw him bat while not moving his feet.

"It dawned on me that this was a moment, like Steve Waugh’s Ashes ton on the last ball of the day, or Michael Bevan’s final four to beat the Windies. One of those events that makes you ask ‘Where were you when...'" Maxwell writes.

"It was crazy to think that I now had one of these, a moment when Australia was all on board.

"It was a strange feeling. Most of my best efforts in Aussie colours have been quick fifties. The people invested in my story, whether people who are close to me or cricket watchers who enjoy how I play, would have this innings as validation of what I can do.

"My career had always been so divisive, even in microcosm during this tournament with the golf cart incident so soon before.

"I had long accepted that my style isn’t for everyone, with some never willing to accept that a bloke who reverse-sweeps his way around the world is a serious player.

"On the other side of the ledger were those who embraced it and lamented that I’d never become the three-format regular that we both felt I was capable of being. I was not used to widespread approval.

"But on this day, at this moment, I was to everyone’s taste."

The Showman by Glenn Maxwell is available in bookstores and online retailers on October 30.