NEWS
Follow UsGlenn Maxwell sat out of the Sunrisers Hyderabad clash on April 15 (Monday) after a string of poor performances that underlined Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL 2024. This was a peculiar season for the Aussie, who has been the most devastating batting star for the franchise in the last three years, accumulating 513, 301, and 400 runs respectively.
However, this year, his bat has remained largely silent - and in the first six matches, he could barely add 32 runs, with a highest score of 28. In the remaining five matches, he could contribute only four runs - which prompted Maxwell to approach the management to drop him from the SRH clash.
"For me, personally, it was a pretty easy decision," Maxwell said in the post-match press conference. "I went to Faf 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.
"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 positively 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.
"But as I said, I wanted to give myself not just the physical break but also the mental break to give myself the right to play professional cricket. I take a lot of pride in my performance, and I put in a lot of hard work behind the scenes to get my body right for every game. And it has been a pretty tough struggle, given my body is on the wrong side of 30. I think that physical and mental toll probably just wore me down a little bit."
However, Maxwell added that there was nothing wrong with his batting approach and the same process would have helped him score a lot of runs. Not getting away with some mistakes cost him a lot 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, and 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.
"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."
Maxwell’s season has a classic resemblance to how he batted in the IPL 2020 in UAE - where he could muster only 108 runs in 11 innings. So much so that, he was playing mostly as a spinner, doing decently with the ball.
"That was probably a different scenario," Maxwell said. "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 weren'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.
"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.
"The management here has been outstanding. We've been working together on taking a fair bit of ownership and the off-field leadership staff is trying to help out as much as they can. Unfortunately, runs just haven't come the way they should have when you are in really good form.
“I don't think I've had a better six months in cricket leading into this tournament. So it's frustrating when it ends up like this. But if I can get my body and my mind right, there's no reason I can't finish the tournament well if I do get another opportunity,” the Aussie all-rounder added.
