Maxwell won’t be part of Australia’s Test team for season opener

As the Australian Test side reports for duty in Perth this weekend, Glenn Maxwell will most likely be in a suburban park in Melbourne turning out for his first-grade club. It’s hardly the start to the season one of the country’s highest-paid stars would have envisaged and certainly not one befitting a player tipped to be on Australia’s next Test tour. Maxwell’s omission from Victoria’s team has been a talking point in Australian cricket this week with many shocked the reigning one-day and T20 player of the year cannot command a game for his state. Victoria have said he was unlucky to miss out due to team balance but players of Maxwell’s ability at state level should have teams built around them. Maxwell averaged 56 in the Shield last summer but, apart from the Twenty20 series in Sri Lanka, he has struggled this year, both for Australia and in the Indian Premier League. He lost his place in the one-day side after poor tours in New Zealand and the West Indies, only 12 months after he was voted Australia’s best one-day player in a year where they won the World Cup no less. His form in the recently completed domestic oneday tournament – 211 runs at 30 – was not flash though hardly poor either. Cricket Victoria has declared there was nothing sinister in Maxwell’s Shield axing, saying it was not related to his failed bid to move to NSW. Nor were there concerns over behavioural issues. That said, expectations within the national set-up have risen of Maxwell now that he is in his fifth year of international cricket.