‘Call Maxi’: The analytical nous behind cricketer Glenn Maxwell’s cult character status

“Did anyone see that?” he asks.

The enthusiasm pours out as Maxwell gesticulates to analyse an opposition bowler.

“Watch his load-up, there. It’s a load-up as if he’s going to bowl a medium pacer, and watch how much extra effort he has to put in to get it from 75 km/h to over 100 km/h.”

The video goes to the next frame.

“It’s a real obvious load-up … see it … it comes up there,” Maxwell says, mimicking the change in bowling action.

“The leggie is there,” he adds, showing what the bowler’s regular action looks like.

“A big change.”

If you’re a casual cricket fan, you might think Maxwell is all flash and instinct. That bravado rather than brains fuels his batting fireworks.

You’d be wrong.

In contrast with the laissez-faire image, cricket’s inner sanctum knows Maxwell as one of the game’s deepest thinkers.

“Just another thing with him,” Maxwell continues calmly.

“There is no reason any of us should be trying to cut it behind point to beat those two fielders.

“It's literally f — ing impossible. There’s not enough pace to work with and that’s how he gets his dot balls.

“Flat bat it out and try to beat deep point and get your two or whatever. But there’s just not enough pace to get it behind point for the right-handers.”

This is the minute detail that Maxwell works on, the angles and placement that could mean the difference between winning and losing.

“I probably watch more cricket than anyone,” Maxwell tells CODE Sports.

“It’s a form of homework, every time I’m watching a game of cricket I’m generally thinking of what I’d be doing in that situation if I was the batting or bowling team.”

A broken leg has forced Maxwell to take stock of his cricket mortality, but it has also revealed the attachment he has to the tactical art of the game.

“There’s so many beautiful intricacies in T20 analysis where you can almost see the match-ups happening before they happen, you can see the fields being set before they happen.

“It unfolds like watching a movie.”

*****

With the Melbourne Stars’ cursed season staggering from one injury to another injury, the equally cursed, recovering Maxwell can’t keep away.

Assistant coach Ben Rohrer convenes the team’s batters for a meeting that CODE Sports is invited to attend. Maxwell is there and there’s a particular buoyancy; it’s his first tentative hit since the shock injury in November.

Rohrer shows video and introduces topics about opposition bowlers and the Stars’ own batting. After each topic, the floor is opened to batters for their ideas as players offer their take on a bowler’s ability to swing the ball, their lengths and variations.

Maxwell waits patiently for all to have their say but, given the relative lack of experience in the team at this point, the responses are generally brief. That's when he jumps in.

“He’s more of an inswing bowler to the lefty, he bowls a lot of square spinners and undercutters,” Maxwell tells the group.

“You’ve got to put him under pressure. You can’t let him get into the game. He sets their game up. He gets those two overs in the powerplay, generally under seven runs an over and it basically sets them up for the rest of the game.

“They can then choose who bowls their overs for the rest of the innings. He doesn‘t need to bowl four, because nobody’s been taking him on, he’s been able to get away with it.”

The 34-year-old points to a recent match where he believes a result was decided on the approach to this bowler.

“Nobody wanted to take him on. Put him under pressure and the rest of the game will open up.”

If there’s anything that can match the thrill of being out there changing a game with the bat for Maxwell, it might be tactically helping change a game or improving a player’s performance.

While being careful not to encroach on the messages of the Stars coaching staff, the blessing has been given to the batters to ‘call Maxi’ if there’s something they want to work through.

When the Stars were on the road recently, young bat Tom Rogers took him up on the offer.

“He called me before the Sixers game, and we spoke on the phone for about half an hour on the day of the game,” Maxwell recalls.

“It was pretty simple, I just laid out some plans for him according to his strengths.”

Rogers tallied up 48 from 33 balls, the highest BBL score of his young career. He’s backed that up with his maiden half century.

“After the game he said to me, ‘Nothing surprised me out there, I knew exactly what I was doing, I was singularly focused and knew my plans’.

“It was good to hear and I feel that‘s the way modern-day players should be approaching the game.

“Nothing should surprise you.”

*****

Maxwell can’t pinpoint where his interest in analysis came from, it’s been there since childhood.

“As a kid I watched my favourite players and then tried to emulate them. It was absorbing information on the TV,” he says.

“It's just become another level; playing for different teams around the world, I try to emulate what I’ll face on the ground in training and put my plans in place.”

A similar thing happened when he joined the Victorian squad. He’d sit quietly in the dressing room or at the dinner table while listening to veteran teammates discussing the game, enthralled.

“Guys like Cameron White, Dave Hussey, Andrew McDonald, Brad Hodge and Chris Rogers. They were having these heavy debates about the way the game is played.”

“I’d sit there and think these guys are talking about the game on a whole different level and as a young player I tried to soak it all up.”

The all-rounder estimates he’s watched every BBL game during his injury break.

“There’s so much footage and games on TV, slow-motion replays and insight on the field with players on the microphone … there’s sort of no excuses for not being well-equipped when you come to game time.”

His cricket brain can be the enemy of sleep before a game. What shot he’d play to certain balls he knew he would get from bowler A. The field that would be set for bowler B, the gaps he’d need to target.

“You’ve played out most of your innings against the bowling attack before you’ve even arrived at the ground,” Maxwell notes.

“I generally had no surprise for what I’d come up against.

“You still have to assess the conditions, the pitch and the game situation, but to be as well prepared as you possibly can by having an idea of what you’re going to face before you get out there is also a good way of dealing with nerves and stress.”

During his time off, Maxwell has particularly enjoyed BBL commentary stints for Fox Sports. He’s felt a responsibility to lift the curtain on what is happening in the format to those at home.

“I feel you can talk about that side of the game,” he says.

“It’s a great format to show your tactical nous. I reckon you can show more as a leader in T20 than in the other formats.”

*****

There is also a deeper element to what Maxwell does and would like to do in the future.

Despite the perceived natural talents, his career has not been an easy ride. Rising alongside the T20 format, Maxwell had a set of shots that could be incredibly destructive but had traditionally been perceived as reckless.

He was asked to use those talents in extreme ways but the expectations placed on him were borne out of traditional cricket norms.

“It was down to picking a player in an inconsistent role, and expecting consistency, which as a young player coming through was quite hard to do,” Maxwell sums up those struggles.

“Those setbacks during my career weren't easy to deal with.”

Publicly he’s rarely complained – his one mild utterance of annoyance about where he batted for Victoria drew a fine and censure from then national captain Steve Smith in 2016 – but at times it’s weighed heavily.

In 2019, he had to take a complete break from the game.

“I was pretty much done with the game and I was over it,” Maxwell remembers.

“But even earlier than that, the frustration of living from result to result is quite draining. Getting pushed back down every time you make a mistake is quite hard as a young player.”

While Maxwell doesn’t elaborate on specifics, it seems that failing like everyone else was much more acceptable than failing playing ‘Maxwell-ball’ to many across Australian cricket.

“It's probably taken until I was 30-plus years old to get accepted for the way I was playing and to feel comfortable in all the teams I played in.

“It would have been nice to happen a decade earlier, but it’s still nice to get to that point at some stage of my career where I feel comfortable and proud that I got out the other side and stuck it out.”

Maxwell has played 377 domestic T20 games, only just shaded by Dan Christian and Aaron Finch among Australians, and represented his country in 98 T20s.

Coupled with his analysis and knowledge, some sort of coaching role down the track would seem a natural fit.

If it were to happen a priority would be making life easier for successors who push the game in different directions.

“Hopefully I’d help them not go through a lot of the stuff that I went through as a young player,” he says.

“I’d like to help them become more rounded players and help let them enjoy the game and play as naturally as they can. Not set parameters on them that take away from their strengths.”

Along with tactical nous, Maxwell would bring the element of empathy that he may have needed at times.

“There’s no bitterness towards the game. I just know the mistakes that people made with me that I wish had been dealt with differently.

“It would be nice to turn the next generation into cricketers that don’t end up in the holes that I did.”

*****

The disastrous broken leg that put paid to his Indian Test tour hopes could have plunged him back to one of those holes, but Maxwell has used the past few months as an opportunity to explore what his future looks like.

“It‘s been nice to step away and have a look at what the end of my career looks like,” he says.

He would still love one last shot at Test cricket but admits that it would be a “long road back from here”.

For someone who has often felt unsure where his career was headed, the end could elicit a further crisis of confidence. But as that time draws closer, the recent break has given him a sense that everything will be OK.

“It doesn't scare me as much as it might have before,” Maxwell says.

“The break has relaxed me a bit. I’m not stressed about life after cricket, I think there‘s things that I’ll naturally do without putting too much pressure on myself to push my career an extra year when I don’t have to.”

Dabbling in commentary and coaching has helped ease his mind. Given the level of analysis that buzzes within Maxwell’s head most days – and how it manifests itself in team meetings or on commentary – it would seem there is a ready-made path that, as well as putting food on the table, also nourishes his curious mind.

Could any or both of those vocations be that life after playing?

“It’s hard to say,” Maxwell says.

“In 10 years time I‘d love to be still involved in the game somehow. I’d love to be helping the next group of players.”

In the meantime, he’ll keep plying his trade on the T20 circuit and finding beauty in the tactical side of cricket that he likens to “poetry”. Tonight there’ll be another match somewhere in the world to watch and lose himself in.