- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Glenn Maxwell has always been an innovator.
He has breathed new life into the game of cricket via his dizzying array of inventions – the amazing, never-before-seen shots, the refreshingly brash attitude to the game, the creative new methods of being dismissed.
The man they call ‘The Big Glenn’ is, more than any other individual, responsible for supercharging cricket’s surge into the twenty-second century. And, folks, it looks like he’s done it again.
Maxwell’s declaration that he was hurt by Matthew Wade batting above him in Sheffield Shield matches, thus damaging Maxwell’s chances of a Test call-up, excited me more than a declaration from a cricketer has in a long time.
It excited me because it was recognition of a fundamental truth that is rarely acknowledged by the modern cricketer: intra-team conflict is fun as hell.
Usually Australian cricketers who hate other Australian cricketers are at pains to keep that fact quiet while they are playing in the same team. Mostly they save it for retirement and a tell-some autobiography which brings gasps from all of us as we pretend we didn’t already know.
It’s a time-honoured tradition in Australian cricket: rifts get leaked, rifts get denied, player quits, rifts get confirmed, public tut-tuts.
Maxwell has, in his inimitable way, defied tradition by confirming his antipathy towards a teammate on the eve of a game in which they will both play – indeed, a game in which they may well have to bat together and in which one will almost certainly have to keep wicket to the other’s bowling.
Not only that, he’s opened up about his anger at Wade at the very time when he needs to avoid putting a foot wrong if he wants to return to the test team – which, obviously, he should: the fact Glenn Maxwell isn’t in the test team is the greatest injustice since Federation. Basically, Maxwell knows he has to make every post a winner and has decided that slagging off his state captain in public is the way to do it.
And I think that’s absolutely brilliant.
Administrators and broadcasters have gone to great lengths over the years to spice up the match day experience for us. Fireworks, music, dancers, various competitions, Ian Chappell’s slow descent into madness – they’ll try anything, and good on them.
But nothing they do can ever really match the electric frisson that sizzles through a game when you know two teammates hate each other.
Great sport is all about stories, and at the heart of any good story is conflict. Sure, conflict is inherent in a cricket game – I’m not saying that the clash between Australia and New Zealand isn’t going to be worth watching in itself – but compelling subplots always make stories richer and more satisfying.
Plenty of movies showcase the struggle between good and evil – the very best ones also involve an internal battle on the good side over the very nature of goodness itself. And that’s what we have in Maxwell versus Wade a questioning of what it means to be good. We want both of them to triumph over the Black Caps, but who do we want to triumph in the fight within a fight?
It is going to be absolutely thrilling. When Maxwell comes on to bowl, what does Wade do? Does he keep tidily, professionally, pouching each chance safely? Or, should a Kiwi batsman venture fatally out of his crease and miss the ball, does the wicketkeeper, feelings hurt by the bowler’s public betrayal, mischievously let the ball slip from his grasp and deny Maxwell the wicket out of reprehensible yet understandable malice?
And if Wade does mess up a stumping or drop a catch, how will we know whether he did it deliberately anyway? After all, it’s Matthew Wade we’re talking about.
On the other hand Maxwell, can make Wade look foolish too? Will he surprise the keeper with a quicker ball with no warning, or will he toss deliveries wide, causing the appearance of sloppiness as his erstwhile skipper lunges left and right to no avail?
And should they bat together? Well, New Zealand will rate their chances of a run-out highly – not to mention the numerous straight drives that will be drilled directly at the non-striker’s head. Humiliation, injury and heartache beckon tantalisingly.
That’s why this looms as the most intriguing Chappell-Hadlee series to date. Suddenly cricket has acquired a lustre and spirit we feared we’d never see. Good luck to both combatants, and may the most spiteful man win.