‘Haven’t got a lot of opportunities’
MUMBAI: Glenn Maxwell is an enigma in IPL. Starting with Mumbai Indians, whose $1mn buy in 2013 earned him the nickname ‘Million-Dollar Baby’, he has gone for big money in every auction as teams bet on his massive potential as a 360-degree hitter. Somehow, he has not lived up to expectation, which were even higher this time. He was the second most expensive buy at the 2020 auctions—Kings XI Punjab splurging R10.75 crore. He landed in the UAE after a blazing century that won Australia the ODI series in England, showing he had put behind mental health issues. In IPL though, he has scored just 58 runs in seven innings and KXIP are at the bottom of the table with just one win. In an interview, he addressed his own and the team’s struggles. Excerpts:
You haven’t got going so far this IPL?
If you look at our batting order, three of the guys batting ahead of me are among the top-10 run scorers in the tournament. It doesn’t leave a whole lot of runs for the guys batting below. I have been not out three times. Probably it shows how little amount of balls I am getting at the end of the innings. I am still trying to do the best I can. I am still batting well. A month ago, I probably played one of the best innings (108) of my career in England. Not much has changed since, just probably the time at the crease and that opportunity to sort of get myself in. Lot of the time I am trying to get the player who has been batting longer on strike. Yeah, I haven’t got the whole lot of opportunities so far and people will look at the amount of runs I have scored. With the limited opportunities I have got, I still feel I am hitting the ball really well.
What is the missing link, has it been addressed?
A little bit of luck will help. If you look at the first game, we scored more runs than Delhi, the umpire wrongly called a short run (KXIP lost in the Super Over). We could have started with two wins in a row, and then we bowled one bad over against RR which ended up getting them back into the game. Unfortunately, little moments like that haven’t been taken. We’ve spoken at length about taking those key moments. In T20, you make one mistake and it can sort of get compounded. We feel we’ve played good cricket this year to win most of our games, we just haven’t been on the right side of luck in this tournament. In T20, luck can play a big part, and teams riding their luck and going well with it can get on a bit of a run.
The last defeat (by 2 runs against KKR), how difficult is it for the team to recover from such a loss?
It is no different from any one of the other losses we had. We’ve been in winning positions in pretty much all our games; this is another example of not taking that opportunity to finish the game. It is so disappointing to fall just a bit short again. (Had) I hit that ball another inch longer and we go into the Super Over, we get a chance to win. It has just been the way the tournament has gone for us. That inch seems to be going against us. In T20, it can turnaround so quickly. The guys are going to stay level, focused on what we need to do. We are still playing very good entertaining cricket; we just need a little luck.
How has KL Rahul handled the captaincy job?
He has been really good. He has such a calm head on the shoulder. We have sort of worked together at different times. When he was keeping, I was at mid-off to try and help the bowlers. He would give me messages to pass on to them; I try to channel my inner KL and try to deliver the messages like he would. Unfortunately, we haven’t quite turned them into results, but he has led from the front, performed unbelievably well with the bat.