OPINION
Follow UsThere’s a parallel universe, somewhere, in which Glenn Maxwell is a Test regular, and is Australia’s very own Rishabh Pant. There, he is the x-factor that turns matches on its head in a single session. He is the force of nature that terrorises bowling attacks and gives the opposition captain sleepless nights, and he is the box-office entertainer that keeps fans glued to their television screens everytime he walks out to bat. He is Mr. Cricket.
It sure would be fun to exist in that universe.
Unfortunately, we don’t.
Where we live, Maxwell is a white-ball specialist that has played 7 Tests across his 10-year-long international career. Here, Maxwell, the Test cricketer divides opinions.
And sure enough, he started to divide opinions merely minutes after being added to the Test squad to face Sri Lanka.
“Yes, he is the x-factor that the team needs in the middle-order in extreme conditions; he is one of the best players of spin in the country anyway” vs “No. This is a guy that has not played first-class cricket in three years. He should be nowhere near the squad, he’s made it purely based on reputation.”
We’re not here to take sides, so let’s not go there. But facts can be discussed.
And an indisputable fact is that Maxwell never got the run he deserved in Test cricket.
If that he’s played 7 Tests across 10 years does not already tell the story, then how about this? Only once in his Test career has Maxwell ever played three Tests in a row.
That was in 2017 when he got a rare ‘long’ run of 4 Tests across India and Bangladesh. Before, of course, being booted out of the side immediately after, despite having scored a ton in one of the Tests and top-scoring in an innings in another.
Because apparently, he did not have the ‘temperament’ to succeed in Test cricket, a phrase that was repeatedly used as a stick to beat him.
It didn’t matter that he scored a match-saving ton on his first Test back, where Australia were in a precarious position at 140/4 on Day 1 of a subcontinent Test, against peak Ravichandran Ashwin and peak Ravindra Jadeja. That 104, by the way, came off 185 balls at a strike rate of 56.21.
It didn’t matter that he looked at ease on a deteriorating Dharamsala wicket and top-scored for the side with a 45 in an innings where no other Australian batter, Steve Smith included, managed to score more than 25.
It didn’t matter that he immediately went back to Shield cricket and registered a 700-run season at an average of 50, a campaign in which he posted a highest individual score of 278.
The door was shut on him because, apparently, he was a hack that did not have the tools to succeed in the longest format. The only evidence for it is, well, him getting out in an ‘unacceptable’ fashion a couple of times.
What was completely okay in the selectors and the management’s eyes, though, was Maxwell’s competitors getting out in ‘acceptable’ ways over and over and over and over again.
Between Feb 2017 and Dec 2018, Mitchell Marsh registered 3 fifty-plus scores. And yet he played 12 Tests in this period. What’s to be noted here is Marsh’s bowling was barely effective: in the said period, he took 6 wickets at an average of 76.00, taking more than a wicket in an innings just once. Essentially, he was being picked for his batting, though he was barely scoring runs.
This is not a knock on Marsh, he is not being singled out and targeted. His is the name that has to be taken for he was Maxwell’s direct competitor. That Marsh got repeated chances and Maxwell didn’t, though, is representative of how the latter was largely hard done by.
Perhaps the single biggest injustice — or betrayal, if you could call it that — was served to Maxwell by CA in 2018. Having been dropped from the Test side post the subcontinent stretch in 2017, the unofficial Tests against India ‘A’ in 2018 served as an opportunity for the Victorian to push his case for Test selection for the series against Pakistan in the UAE.
The selectors, though, opted to leave Maxwell out of the ‘A’ tour claiming that he had already showcased his subcontinent prowess in 2017 in the series against India.
Their justification for leaving Maxwell out of the ‘A’ tour would have made sense had he made the flight to the UAE, but Maxwell, much to everyone’s shock, was left out of the Pakistan series. To add insult to injury, selected ahead of him were Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne, both of whom featured and impressed in the ‘A’ series in India.
The inexplicable move from CA even had Ricky Ponting, of all people, fuming.
"If I was Maxi I'd be thinking, 'why didn't you give me the chance to actually go there (to India) and push my case to get myself into the team?'" Ponting told cricket.com.au.
"That's all a bit bizarre to me. If I was Maxi and I hadn't been given the chance to play for Australia A, I'd be ropeable. They didn't pick him on that Australia A tour and they've said they've seen him play enough in those conditions and knew what he could do. But if you think about it now, that must have actually meant they weren't going to pick him at all. He didn't even come into calculations for that Test tour.
“With Marnus and Travis Head going on that A tour, they gave them the opportunity to play in those conditions, they've done well and then they picked them (for the Test squad). I'm not sure what the message is, but it's a bit confusing to me.”
After going through all this, can anyone, then, really blame Maxwell for opting to stop playing first-class cricket in late 2019? Whatever he did was always ‘not enough’ in the selectors’ eyes, and he was being held to the strictest standards there were, every move of his deeply scrutinized.
The mixed signals and inexplicable axings was enough to convince the man himself that never again would he wear the Baggy Green.
"I thought that might have been it (end of Test career)," Maxwell said recently, speaking post his recall to the Test side.
"I just felt like I was there and thereabouts, and forgotten about.
"Five years ago when I played my last Test, I felt like I was in career-best form and to not play another Test immediately after that, I thought maybe I'd missed my opportunity without doing too much wrong."
Bearing all this in mind, Maxwell’s recall to the Test side feels ‘right’. It might not be fair, and that’s a fact. This is a player that, after all, has not played a single red-ball game in three years. Technically, he has no business even being in the picture, for he’s all but been an exclusive white-ball specialist for three years.
But it feels right because he now finally has a chance to settle unfinished business.
After a 13-year hiatus, British band Porcupine Tree last week released a studio album titled ‘Closure / Continuation.’ The reason for the ‘C/C’ name, according to band member Steven Wilson, was because the band genuinely did not know if this album would serve as a continuation or be a mere closure.
Likewise, we do not know if this Test recall for Maxwell is closure or continuation. But, nevertheless, at least he now has a realistic chance of adding to his 7 Test caps. And blimey, it is happening in the world we live in and not a parallel universe.
