Maxwell and Livingstone have failed to perform to their potential in the ongoing IPL.
Speaking on Cricbuzz, Sehwag claimed that players like Glenn Maxwell and Liam Livingstone come to India for holiday during the IPL months.
Sehwag believes both players have no hunger left to improve their performances and are not interested in winning trophies for their respective franchises.
Maxwell and Livingstone were both left out of the playing XI of Punjab Kings and Royal Challengers Bengaluru, respectively after a horrible start to the season. They failed to make any impact either with the bat or ball so far this season.
"Maxwell, Livingstone have no hunger anymore. They come to India to spend their holidays. It's not like they love their teams, or that they are passionate about winning games for them. That they have not won a trophy yet and they have to get it done this year," Sehwag said on Sunday (April 20).
"I have played with a lot of overseas players, out of which maybe one or two of them had the hunger. These other guys only talk and do not show any performance on the field," he added.
Sehwag commended the worth ethic of players like David Warner and AB de Villiers, citing that they were the exceptions among overseas lot.
"David Warner, AB de Villiers and Glenn McGrath are the three players who used to tell me, 'I will win games for you, play me.' I used to be in a fix about whom to play and whom to drop. But I have seen other players — West Indians, Sri Lankans — who used to ask after the semi-finals, 'Where's the party tonight?' That's when you get to know who wants to win trophies and who is here to chill," he remarked.
It is worth mentioning here that Sehwag and Maxwell had a fallout during the IPL 2017 season when the latter was the captain of Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings).
In his book 'The Showman', Maxwell alleged that Sehwag forced his hand on selection of the playing XI, being the franchise’s Director of Cricket Operations.
Maxwell had a fantastic IPL 2014 season for the Mohali-based franchise, amassing 552 runs at a strike rate of 187.75 as the team made it to the final that year. He was handed the team’s captaincy for IPL 2017. Under his leadership, however, Punjab lost seven of their 14 league matches to finish fifth in the eight-team points table.
"I was going to be captain, which Sehwag told me when we met during the Test series. We had played together, but now he had retired into what was described at the time as a "mentor" role. We discussed how the team would operate and I thought we were all on the same page," Maxwell wrote in his book, an excerpt of which was published on ESPNCricinfo last year.
"How wrong I was. Our coach, J Arunkumar, was coming in for his first season, and it became clear to him that he was coach in name only, with Sehwag pulling the strings... Privately, though, I had coaches and players coming to me asking what on earth was going on, and I found it difficult to give them a straight answer," he added.
In the book, Maxwell also claimed that he volunteered to do the press conference after the team was bowled out for a mere 73 in the last league game. However, Sehwag addressed the media and labelled Maxwell as a ‘big disappointment’. The captain was even removed from the main WhatsApp group of the team.
"Upon getting onto the team bus, I found I'd been deleted from the main WhatsApp group. What was going on here? By the time we reached the hotel my phone was blowing up, with Sehwag having unloaded on me as a "big disappointment", blaming me for not taking responsibility as captain, and all the rest. It was unpleasant, especially when I thought we had parted on good terms," Maxwell wrote.
"I texted him to say how much it hurt to read those comments and added that he had lost a fan in me for the way he had conducted himself. Sehwag's response was simple: "Don't need fan like you." We never spoke again. I knew my time was at an end and told the owners as much: if Sehwag was going to stick around, they were making a mistake and not to bother with me," he added.