A poor run of scores in the ongoing IPL 2024 left Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell frustrated and as a result he has opted to take a break from the tournament to refresh himself physically and mentally.
Maxwell, who came into the tournament on the back of stellar form with the bat, amassing 552 runs, including two centuries from 17 T20Is since the start of November, hasn’t been able to find his groove in the IPL, and has endured three ducks, and lasted more than five balls only once – against Kolkata Knight Riders, when he made a 19-ball 28 with the help of two dropped catches.
The steep decline in form led Maxwell to approach the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) team management and request them ‘to probably try someone else’ ahead of their home fixture against Sunrisers Hyderabad that ended in a run-fest with the Hyderabad side eventually winning by 25 runs.
There were speculations that the Aussie might have sat out because of a thumb injury but it wasn’t the case.
“For me, personally, it was a pretty easy decision. I went to Faf (du Plessis) and the coaches after the last game and said I felt it was probably time we tried someone else. I have been in this situation in the past where you can keep playing and get yourself deeper into a hole. I think now is actually a good time for me to give myself a bit of a mental and physical break, get my body right. If I’m required to get in during the tournament, I can hopefully get back into a really solid mental and physical space where I can still have an impact,” Maxwell said after RCB’s sixth defeat in seven games.
“We have had a pretty big deficiency straight after the powerplay, which has been my area of strength over the last couple of seasons. I felt like I wasn’t contributing in a positive way with the bat, and with the results and the position we find ourselves on the table, I think it’s a good time to give someone else an opportunity to show their wares, and hopefully, someone can make that spot their own,” the 35-year-old added.
Maxwell, who started the IPL with a first-ball duck against Chennai Super Kings, acknowledged the challenges of T20 format, and said it’s all about finding the initial rhythm that decides a player’s run in the tournament.
“T20 cricket can be like that sometimes – it’s a pretty fickle game. Even if you look at the first game, I ran one off the middle of the bat to the keeper. I picked up the length really well, saw a scoring opportunity, but opened the face a little bit too much. When you are going well, that goes wide of the gloves, you get a boundary, you are 4 off 1, and you are away for the tournament,” he said.
“I probably just haven’t got away – it’s as simple as that. In the first few games, I feel I made reasonably good decisions, but I was still finding ways to get out. It can happen in T20 cricket and when it snowballs like that, you can go searching and try too hard and forget the basics of the game,” he added.
It isn’t the first time, Maxwell has found himself in such a dire situation, as he endured a similar slump in 2020 as well when he was plying his trade for the Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings). During that season, he managed only 108 runs in 11 innings, at an average of 15.42 and a strike rate of 101.88.
However, Maxwell said it was a different scenario as he was contributing in one department of the game and was mostly used by the franchise as an off-spin option who could bat a bit.
“That was probably a different scenario. Back then the thing that was hurting me was I was bowling really well. So I was actually playing more as a spinner who was used at the back end (with the bat). We had KL (Rahul) and Mayank (Agarwal) who were the two leading run-scorers in the competition at that time, so there wasn’t a lot of balls left in the game. So I wasn’t able to get any match rhythm. And when I was, it was only for a few balls here and there,” he said.
“So I said the same thing to the Kings XI management back at the time, that we can have an overseas bowler in my place. But we didn’t have an offspinner as well. So I sort of played as an overseas offspinner who could bat a little bit,” he added.
Coming back to RCB’s conundrum in IPL 2024, the franchise finds itself at the bottom of the points tally, and got seven more games in hand. However, if they are to find themselves in the race to the play-offs, the team management has to find a way out to revive their bowling unit that has been lacklustre in their seven outings so far.