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The phrase ‘excitement machine’ gets bandied around a lot these days, particularly when Australians are tonking hapless visitors into the stands in a Twenty20 fixture on home soil.
It gets the blood roused, sure, but there are only so many times before you can ‘smoke’ a ball before your whole ‘expert commentary’ schtick goes up in flames.
Enter Glenn Maxwell, Exhibit A for many things, both good and bad. It largely depends on who you talk to.
For some he’s the symptom of everything that is going to lead cricket as we know it down the plughole. For others, he’s the modern day Imran Khan or Viv Richards, who will fearlessly and charismatically lead cricket into a glorious new era.
Don’t forget he’s an excitement machine who smokes the ball over the rope with astonishing regularity.
But Glenn is suffering from the same problem the Aussies were when they went over to Pakistan and got clubbed by a team better prepared to play in the conditions that were served up; they were talked up.
Before the tour, I thought the Aussies would blast that simultaneously inexperienced and over-the-hill Pakistan line-up away with a couple of Mitchell Johnson bouncers and a spruce Chris Rogers ton. Looking at the difference in application between the two sides with Twenty20 hindsight, though, is a bit like comparing the discography of Bruce Springsteen and Robin Thicke.
Pakistan were stoic, in it for the long haul, and good; the Sachin Tendulkar to Australia’s Glenn Maxwell, who incidentally is the subject of this article. The baggy greens more resembled his style. Inconsistent, full of bravado and swagger, but with little assurance in their selections or method.
But Glenn, and the Aussies, have a little more to them than big mouths and bigger blows over midwicket. And what to do with Glenn Maxwell is a question that remains unanswered.
To call him a Twenty20 slogger is to oversimplify. To herald him as an Australian cricketing messiah because children like to wear his jersey is similarly naive.
His rise through the ranks to baggy green #433 speaks not only to his enormous potential, but also a large degree of hastiness and desire to pick on potential alone.
After all, excitement machines sell tickets to stadia all around Australia, and he can smoke a ball when he gets it right. And you can only know who is an excitement machine by vainly repeating it, over and over, during the telecast.
What speaks to me is the little that actually comes out of Glenn’s mouth, compared to what is written about him.
I remember reading, around this time last year, about his desire to lose ‘The Big Show’ tag, which he was somehow stuck with on his way to T20 stardom internationally, and in the BBL and in the IPL.
“It spun out of control pretty quickly,” he said at the time.
“I desperately tried to shrug it off but the thing is when you fight nicknames like that that you don’t like, people just keep running with it.
“I’m trying to ignore it now and hopefully it disappears soon and I can just be called Maxy.”
I am in complete agreement with Glenn; drop the nickname. The hype puts way too much pressure on a guy who’s not only expected to score runs, but do so in an aesthetically pleasing way at a ball-tearing strike rate.
But on the flipside, how much of this did Glenn ask for?
Million dollar contracts, people shouting that he’s a ‘Gen Y nuffy who’ll never play consistent Test cricket’, starting with a bang in the shorter formats of the game. Sound familiar?
It was David Warner, in 2009.
The difference? Warner’s killing it at Test level. He’s done plenty to shrug the tag.
Maxwell’s been around for less time, sure, but he hasn’t exactly set the world on fire when he’s been given the chance. It seems as though the longer the game goes, the worse Glenn goes.
His Twenty20 stats are very good. His one day stats are alright. His Test stats are abominable, granted that he’s played twice in India and once in Pakistan. On both tours he was emergency spin support for a flailing team, not really the right environment to prove your red ball credentials.
But that, if you take his words from last year, is exactly what Glenn wants to do.
“I haven’t put a whole lot of big hundreds on the board, so there’s a few things working against me,” he said.
“I need to change that perception really fast.”
He’s not changing it, let alone fast. Maxwell is pinned down as a flat track, white ball bully with the blade, and an unsubtle offie who can rush through overs in limited-over contests.
So what’s the solution to this Maxwell-sized problem?
It involves three parties.
The first thing is for us to listen to the man, and believe him. He wants to be a red-ball cricketer. He has said it, on the record, and we have no reason not to believe him.
What does he need to do to earn that?
The answer is in the sentence really – you earn your baggy green. David Warner did it. Michael Clarke, another formerly glamorous limited-overs cricketer turned seasoned Test player, did it too.
Sheffield Shield runs and displaying the temperament that’s required for Test cricket will land him a spot up the order. Whether he gets a chance at the Shield with his chock-full limited-overs schedule is seriously doubtful, but if he’s serious about Test cricket, then that’s what he’ll have to do.
That’s his part of the bargain. He must fulfil it, like David Warner did. He converted the doubters, and is entrenched in that coveted openers spot.
What’s our role in this?
Aside from stopping with the baseless Gen Y bashing, it’s to give him an opportunity to prove himself. If he fails, then I suppose those who doubted can say I told you so. If I’m honest, I think Maxwell will never be much more than Andrew Symonds was at Test level.
That said, I hope I’m wrong.
And the final party in the bargain?
It has to be the commentators, who must promise to never use the terms ‘excitement machine’, ‘smoke’ and ‘The Big Show’, and stop the unreasonable expectation on someone who is so young in his cricketing career.
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