Royal Challengers Bengaluru all-rounder Glenn Maxwell described young pace sensation Mayank Yadav as “pretty formidable” while comparing the Lucknow Super Giants tearaway to former Aussie quick Shaun Tait during his playing days.
“It’s such a beautiful smooth action. He (Mayank) sort of glided through the crease really nicely. I think pace-wise, the only one that I can sort of really resemble it to is a little bit like Shaun Tait when he was in his heyday,” Maxwell said.
“I think when he was at the peak of his powers it was extremely hard to pick up the extra zip it feels like it has off the wicket. I think that’s as close as it probably comes to it,” he added.
Maxwell, who was one of the three victims along with fellow Aussie all-rounder Cameroon Green and Rajat Patidar during RCB’s match against LSG on Tuesday night, said he had paid close attention to Mayank while watching LSG’s previous game against Punjab Kings but nothing could prepare him for the real thing.
“I thought it was really impressive. He hurried on a few of the Punjab batters and I certainly did a little bit of homework before coming up against him. But it’s nothing doing homework against someone until you actually see it coming out of the hand and have to try and pick up the length,” Maxwell said on ESPN’s Around the Wicket.
“He bowled me the first one which was just a high bouncer and the wicket that we’ve been producing at (Bengaluru) has been a little bit two-paced and it sort of came through a bit slower than I thought it was going to. And I was like, ah, that wasn’t too bad.
“And then the next one was hard length and skidded on probably faster than I thought it was going to be and as you saw I went to pull thinking that I picked up the length really well and before you know it, it’s on you, hitting the shoulder the bat and ballooning up in the air.
“He has some real extra speed that you don’t really see a lot of around world cricket at the moment. You see guys bowl pretty consistently around the 140s (kph) or high 140s. But to have mid-150s consistently in your arsenal is pretty formidable,” he further said.
Maxwell, who has been due with the bat after dismal returns of 0, 3, 28 and 0 in RCB’s four outings so far, admitted that the team did not get off to the start they would have expected, but hoped to make a turnaround in their away games during the next few weeks. RCB has managed to win one of their four opening games, so far in the competition.
“It obviously hasn’t been a great start for us or myself individually. It’s been a little bit of a struggle. I think we’ve been probably caught a little bit behind with our conditions that we’ve probably produced in the first few home games as well,” Maxwell said.
“I think last year we had a beautiful even wicket that we were able to I suppose get ourselves into the game, get our top batters going and I’ve felt that those two-paced wickets it’s just been a bit of a struggle for our overseas players to get into the game and get that sort of consistency of performance. And when you start slow in T20 cricket it can be a hard thing to come back and find rhythm to get back into it. So hopefully this little away trip does us some good,” the Australian added.