Glenn Maxwell: How Big Show became the Real Deal after six barely-believable weeks in India | Cricket News

Glenn Maxwell’s Guwahati hundred was one for the road, a goode bow to six surreal weeks in India. Those six weeks would come to define Maxwell, shape his legacy and place him among the greatest to have worn the gold and yellow stripes of his country. In this span he peeled off the fastest ever hundred an Australian in ODIs; he became Australia’s first double centurion in the format when producing one of the greatest knocks of all time, he hammered 400 runs at 66 with a strike rate of 150; he snaffled six wickets while maintaining an economy rate of 4.81, he kissed and held aloft the World Cup, and before he signed off, blasted an astonishing hundred in a T20 game.
More significantly, in six barely believable weeks, Maxwell went from being an incredibly good white-ball utility cricketer to a truly great limited-over player of his time, he went from being a mercurial talent to being the definition of super-modern batting, when the Big Show (nicknamed in a sarcastic tone after he became the most expensive IPL player in 2013) became the Real Deal.
Australia’s Glenn Maxwell bats during the third T20 cricket match between India and Australia India in Guwahati, India, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Collaborating with Surykumar Yadav, Maxwell is laying down the grammar and syntax of white-ball batting, sketching the outlines of super-modern batting. No one has made the complicated look so effortless, the impossible look possible. He has shed theatre off the theatrical. Just like AB de Villiers did, a complicated endeavour that is batting looks utterly smooth and natural at the hands of Maxwell, transporting you to backyard cricket with a ragged tennis ball and a battered piece of wood. He would never perform such miracles every day; he would never be as consent as Virat Kohli; but what he does, he only could.
He glides into the most difficult of shots. Like the scooped (or was it flicked?) six off Arshdeep Singh. He went low across and shaped to scoop, before he flicked it over the fine-leg for a six. Or when he reverse-lapped the same bowler over the short-leg fence. The strokes flow so naturally that those seem part of muscle memory. Perhaps they are honed years of practice in the nets. Watching Maxwell at the nets is as gasp-inducing an experience as watching him belt a hundred. Every other stroke is convention-defying, the reverse assortments, the flick-scoops, the usual laps and paddles, Maxwell marching to the beat of his own drum.
It is riotous self-expression, cricket as a laboratory to experiment, cricket stripped to its elements, that is to hit a cricket ball for fun. But months and years go into the making of a shot. “He has once said in a cricket.com.au podcast: “Sometimes I do get the impulse to try something imaginative on the field, when playing a real game. But I res. I only play the shots that I have played a lot in the nets and play those only when I am fully confident, which might take months and weeks sometimes.”
In his current form, there is no stroke he cannot play, no target too steep for him. Bewilderingly, he has multiple strokes for a single ball. He could reverse lap a full ball on off-stump over third man; he could flick-scoop the same ball to exactly the opposite direction. He can be a stationary down-the-ground power-hitting machine; he can also be the pirouetting pyrotechnic sultan too. No bouncer is quick enough for him, no slower ball slow enough for him. On good days, he can make yorkers disappear into the stands too. Quality spin a vulnerability of his. But mundane, variety-less spinners are mere fodder.
Glenn Maxwell playing shots during World Cup. (FILE)
Yet, he is not just a freakish talent, an expression that is often carelessly thrown around to something that cannot be easily explained, methods that are not easily reproducible, as though Maxwell always possessed the range of strokes that he unleashed on hapless bowlers in Mumbai and most recently in Guwahati. For all the flapping at the crease, all the contortions of the body, of all the switching of stance, his game remains rooted to the fundamental tenets of the game. Even when he is reverse-hitting (where he simply rotates the handle so the blade faces backwards), his body is beautifully balanced, he seldom falls over or over-balances, the head is still, the body is statue-like when he imparts the devastating contact with the ball. He always judges the length precisely; subsequently, he always has the time. Or rather creates the illusion that he has time. Quick hands, sharp eyes, strong lower body, which in turns creates a stable base to launch his arms, all make the batsman he is. You can see the old in the new.
Beyond all the technical prowess, he is a sharp reader of minds. He second-guesses the bowlers’ intentions; sees through their plans. Before every ball, he surveys the field with hawkish eyes, programs the angles and spaces of the field into his mind minutely, picks his spots, processes the shots he can execute, and when the ball arrives, he dials the one that is most profitable. He is not someone you could deceive with the standard double-bluff ploys. Prasidh Krishna thought he got a measure over Maxwell and started bowling wide outside the off-stump. But after five balls that yielded only four runs, Krishna went wide again in the game’s final over—he ended up being plundered for 10 runs in two balls. He would fetch two more fours to wrap up the game, his last in India before he flew out for a break.
But those last six weeks would come to define Maxwell and shape his legacy.