Australia batter Glenn Maxwell has opened up on enduring a hard time during Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 when he was not among the runs while playing for Punjab Kings
Australia batter Glenn Maxwell has opened up on his performance in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 for Punjab Kings, saying there came a time when he himself asked to be dropped from the playing XI looking at the composition of the side. In the 2020 season which was played in the UAE, Maxwell managed just 108 runs at a paltry average of 15.52. In the entire campaign, the Australian failed to hit a single six.
This year Maxwell will be playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) after being retained by the franchise. Last year, the Australian showed his talent and class as he played a perfect fiddle to Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers.
“That was obviously a hard time, the previous two years went very good but I struggled to get momentum throughout the tournament. 2020 season was a bit of a nightmare. Nothing really went right. T20 cricket can be hard if you’re a middle-order player. You’re not getting to play a lot of balls in the middle. You’re not getting consistency. KL and Mayank were making truckloads of runs. Pooran was smacking as well, and a lot of times I ended up facing less than an over or two,” Maxwell said on RCB Podcast.
“You can train as much as you want but if you don’t have that in-game momentum, it makes it really hard for a player to rediscover himself. I was going to every game and felt like I haven’t batted for six months. Even though I was training every day, I had no rhythm whatsoever in the game. We had so many top-order batters playing well and we brought Gayle in and I was pushed another spot down the order. I actually went up myself and told them ‘you might as well not play me,” he stated further.
The right-handed batter also said that he does not have the ability like Andre Russell and he cannot go for big shots from ball one.
“I was like, ‘I might get even fewer balls and it’s going to be tougher for me.’ I’m not like Andre Russell who can come out and hit the first ball for six. I need time. To their credit, they stuck with me because I was bowling really well and was fielding and doing a lot of work with the captain and bowlers. But batting-wise, if you don’t get the rhythm early on, it’s really hard to rediscover,” said Maxwell.
The IPL 2022 will begin on March 26 with Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders squaring off in the tournament opener. RCB will play their first match on March 27 against Punjab Kings.
RCB will look to end their IPL title drought under new captain Faf du Plessis. Virat Kohli had last year announced that he would not be leading the franchise from the 2022 season.