Glenn Maxwell has finally come good. Playing for Hyderabad Kingsmen in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) on Sunday, the batting all-rounder smashed a 37-ball 70 to help his team qualify for the play-offs. Considering they had lost their first four games, it was a big deal – fifth win in their last six games — and Super Maxi played a part in it.
This was his sixth game this season. In four innings, he had been an absolute flop with scores of 2,0,2,1. And in one game, he had scored 21 not out off 9 balls in a match-winning effort. Basically, coming into Sunday’s game, he had not done much and was under tremendous pressure. In fact, if truth be told, Maxwell had not done much in the past several months, in franchise cricket as well as international cricket.
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So, his innings came as a big relief to him; for, there were discussions going on about how long he could be stuck with, even by his Big Bash League franchise, Melbourne Stars.
“I’ve gone through lots of rough trots in my whole career. You’re not always going to have success; it’s not always going to be smooth sailing. You’ve got to take so many risks, so you’re going to fail at different times; it’s how you bounce back from that failure which determines what sort of character you have,” he said after the match.
“I’ve been extremely lucky to come over to a really good side. They probably didn’t get the results they deserved in the first four games, but the groundwork that [coach] Jason Gillespie and [captain] Marnus Labuschagne had set for the group was destined to come off at some stage.”
Maxwell right on cue!
Maxwell’s Melbourne Stars coach, Peter Moors, will be very happy following Sunday’s developments. He had earlier indicated that, despite the batsman’s poor form in recent months, he was not going to give up on him.
“What I love about the whole way ‘Maxi’ plays his cricket is his passion for the game. Maxi has epitomised the Stars, and the thought of winning it without him in the team would be a real shame, because he’s put so much into it. He’s box office to watch. It wasn’t his tournament this year [talking about the 2026 BBL in which Maxwell scored 76 runs in 11 games], but that happens a bit in T20,” he said earlier this year in February.
However, Cricket Australia used his quotes in a story on Sunday, hours before Kingsmen’s match. It appears they were kind of trying to send some kind of message to their star player that he need not worry too much.