Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has opted to take a break to freshen up amid his struggles in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 season.
The Australia cricketer requested the RCB team management to pick someone else in his place for the match against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Monday (April 15).
Maxwell is enduring a tough time in the ongoing IPL edition. In six innings so far, he has amassed only 32 runs at an average of 5.33. There were speculations that he missed the SRH game to treat his thumb injury but that was not 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 in a press conference after RCB’s 25-run loss to SRH.
“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,” he added.
Coming into the IPL, Glenn Maxwell was in fine form. In 17 T20s since November last year, he had 552 runs at an average of 42.46 and a strike rate of 185.85, including two hundreds.
However, the IPL 2024 proved to be a horror show for him. Maxwell opened the campaign with a golden duck against the Chennai Super Kings. Since, he has bagged two more ducks and played more than five balls only against Kolkata Knight Riders when he scored 28 off 19 balls.
“T20 cricket can be like that sometimes - it’s a pretty fickle game,” he said. “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.
“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.”
The RCB versus SRH encounter turned out to be an absolute run-fest. Riding on Travis Head’s brutal century (102 off 41 balls) and Heinrich Klaasen’s 31-ball 67, the Sunrisers amassed a colossal 287/3, marking the highest-ever total in IPL history.
Chasing the target, RCB put up a brave fight and went on to score 262/7, courtesy of Dinesh Karthik’s brutal 35-ball 83 and fireworks from Faf du Plessis (62 off 28) and Virat Kohli (42 off 20) at the top.
When asked if, in hindsight, he wished he had played the match against SRH, Maxwell replied: “I did notice during the powerplay that the pitch was not as slow and two-paced as it has been in the first few games. And I realised it was probably a bad game to miss; it would have been nice to be out there batting.”
“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.”
This is not the first time Maxwell is struggling for runs in the IPL. In the 2020 edition, he scored just 108 runs in 11 innings at an average of 15.42 while representing Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings).
“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 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.
“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.”
