"I Played With Afghanistan's Emotions..."- Glenn Maxwell

While the Afghanistan team were watching Glenn Maxwell wincing in pain with cramps in his toes, calf, hamstrings, and back spasms in the hope that he would eventually be too weak to carry on, it seemed Glenn Maxwell was just messing around with the Afghans at the Wankhede. Apart from the sixes and fours, it was the basic survival instinct and a lot of mind games which included smiling and getting in your opponent’s head. Glenn Maxwell was able to pull it off with skipper Pat Cummins and produced a show that the streets would never forget

Glenn Maxwell’s participation in the match against Bangladesh at the MCA Stadium on Friday is unlikely, but speaking on the podcast Club Prairie Fire, he offered a peek into his response to the collapse at 91/7. The Australian batting unit reckons they have cracked the code to take chases deep down enough to pull it off.

Maxwell Opens Up On His Historic Knock

Glenn Maxwell came onto the crease against Afghanistan on a hattrick ball, the score was 49/4 and David Warner and Josh Inglis were the two recent batters who were back to the dugout. “I had nicked it and didn’t believe it didn’t carry to the keeper. I tried to stare blankly and not look guilty. But I saw them running around the batters a lot. I hoped they’d make a couple of emotional decisions, and burn a few reviews early. And if a few close lbw calls went against them, it could take a toll on them and I could start playing on their emotions,” he told Adam Gilchrist and Michael Vaughn on the Club Prairie Fire.

Glenn Maxwell got two lifelines when he was dropped on 24 and then again on 33. However, he carried on with the legwork for a future onslaught. “Earlier all I did was play one reverse sweep against Noor Ahmad to make sure the deep backward point became a little bit finer, and I knew they had to have mid-off back at some stage. They wouldn’t take mid-wicket out if they wanted to bowl a leggie. So with the sweep, I created a gap on either side of mid-off, both sides of the cover and over the top. As soon as I got it wide outside off, I could use my hands through gaps. I was setting up even dot ball to get those boundary gaps,” he explained of manipulating the field.

Maxwell Reveals How He Planned The Chase

Glenn Maxwell would prey on the impatience of Afghanistan players, something he calls a subcontinent trait. “The energy that they had in the first 15-20 overs was extraordinary and we have seen that a lot from them. I have played (against) a lot of sub-continental teams and one thing I have always found is that if you could take the sting out of the game, not by runs but by basically being there, you play one or two shots in every couple of overs and you can see how flat it starts to get,” he added.

“They start a bit of bickering, infighting, finger-pointing, arms-raising, fielders not paying attention, it sort of starts to unravel,” he said.

Pat Cummins And Glenn Maxwell Pulled Off A Brilliant Chase

Pat Cummins played a major role, with his easy manner and sticking around, it was like the two of them were sharing a moment, drinking at a pub, talking cricket. “He was laughing, joking. This one time he played and missed on legside, and said ‘Don’t worry mate, we’ll get them after a few overs when the fielder’s in’. We still needed 200 then! But the fact that we just stood there and smiled, sucked the emotion out of them. It was like they were saying, ‘Hey, we’re still here trying to win a game of cricket’. But neither of us was buying into it too much and kept having fun,” he recalled of a surreal inning where he swung between wincing in pain and grinning at his partner and in between all that swinging his bat.

The desperation or the lack of patience to win the game quickly wasn’t allowed to mount by a simple thought: “We knew we were probably not going to win this. So we thought let’s just stick around. Stick to plans,” Maxwell described, adding that he and Cummins didn’t really go deep into discussing the plans.

Glenn Maxwell was equipped with scoring runs as long as the duo of him and Cummins stayed put. “It’s got a lot to do with positions I get myself into on the golf course where I’m stuck behind a tree and I have to turn my wrist around. Flick it around. It allows you to be inventive. One of the things I used to work for every BBL game was to do drills where the first 12 balls I’d stand dead still and hit them as far as I could as a warm-up to get trajectory. Working on upper body movement without using legs, tinker with bowlers,” he said.

Former Australia Cricketer Adam Gilchrist called Glenn Maxwell’s performance an ODI-salvaging innings. “In the short history of T20 cricket, there have been phenomenal victories when it all seems lost, but batters are bashing their way out of it. The beauty of one-day cricket is you’ve got time for the story to be told. Time for games to look like they’ve been lost, but consolidate, rebuild and relaunch.” Pat Cummins and Glenn Maxwell were toying around with time and the Afghans came as an extension.

Australia qualified for the semi-finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 after this unbelievable win against Afghanistan. They will face South Africa in the semis on 16th November at the Eden Gardens.