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More than any other Australian cricketers in this World Cup, Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Starc have shown they can ride a wave.
The match-up with Sri Lanka at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Sunday had an elemental force. Australia surged to 375 before Sri Lanka swept the other way. Twice their tide peaked, then receded: with Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan; then with Dinesh Chandimal and Angelo Mathews.
With 105 needed from 10 overs, the latter pair were a chance to swamp Australia until Chandimal’s hamstring sank their hopes.
The Australians were better able to harness the swell than their opponents.
Michael Clarke did, when an inevitable twinge in his own hamstring threatened to stem the slow flooding that he and Steve Smith had engineered. Hampered between the wickets, Australia’s captain looked for boundaries.
Like a free-verse poet challenged to write in formal structure, constraints can see creativity flourish in new ways. Clarke bashed the last part of an innings that began with dabs, getting 68 at a run a ball before he was done.
Shane Watson used the energy of first being removed from the team, then rushed back into a different position. No longer caught cack-handed between responsibility and assertiveness at No. 3, Watson played freely down the order and looked like he was enjoying himself at the crease for the first time in a long while. His 67 from 41 was just reward.
But it was Maxwell who most audaciously surfed the movement of the innings, his own batting a wave in itself that becomes unstoppable once it gathers force. In recent weeks he has reached king tide: England copped his 95 from 98 balls in Perth, then 66 from 40 in Melbourne; the 88 from 39 against Afghanistan led to 102 from 53 here.
His maiden ODI century, and the fastest by an Australian, beating James Faulkner’s mark from the 2013 series in India by an over.
He has no compunction, no decorum, no hesitation, no fear. He has learnt to give himself a sighter, but attacks from his second or third ball. He plays shots that shouldn’t be possible to balls that don’t deserve them.
He is making himself into the player that bowlers don’t want to face; he’s a more probable cause of humiliation than reward. Coming in at 175/3, the tide was going Australia’s way. Maxwell used it, added to it, and its movement gathered unstoppably beneath him. There was nothing Sri Lanka could do. Fifty balls and he had ripped the game away.
Sometimes Maxwell’s approach will fail: see 16 single-figure dismissals from 43 innings. Some have called his approach selfish, but it’s unquestionably what the team wants.
Four times in ODIs and five in domestic Twenty20s he has been out between 82 and 95, each time going full steam ahead. That proximate milestones don’t change his method only shows the selflessness of his play.
Today he did slow briefly before his century, probably to avoid the risk of a primate taking up residence between his shoulder blades. But his effort on 99 was testament to his character, as Lasith Malinga thudded a ball off his pad and the crowd applauded Maxwell’s dash to the other end.
When Maxwell didn’t salute, umpire Ian Gould asked whether he’d hit the ball. Maxwell said no and Gould belatedly signalled a leg bye. Surely any batsman would accept extras given as runs? But Maxwell wanted a hundred on his terms, and the next over he had one.
Starc’s contribution with the ball has been as spectacular. Eight of his twelve wickets this World Cup have been bowled. The defining image of his tournament is a blaze of LED lights and flying stumps. Half his career wickets are bowled or lbw. This tells you plenty about his swing, his yorker, the sense of threat he engenders.
Starc’s career bowling average has dipped below 20, his strike rate below 24. He has regularly touched 150 kilometres per hour in this tournament, and pipped Mitchell Johnson for the fastest ball of the day.
Against Sri Lanka, when his team went for over 300 in 46 overs, Starc’s 50 deliveries returned 2/29. Early in the innings while other bowlers were targeted his overs conceded a run here, a couple there.
As Dilshan took six boundaries from a Johnson over, the ground buzzed – this was one-day cricket at its best. Next over he and Sangakkara then looted 14 from Watson.
Starc quickly came back, was driven for four, then sent down five scoreless deliveries. One hit Sangakkara in the ribs, winding him. Another swung and dipped and was a centimetre from his edge and his stump. He conceded only one other boundary all day.
Against New Zealand in Auckland, Starc rode along with their batting implosion and almost pulled off an absurd win. Here he resisted Sri Lanka’s momentum that carried everyone else before it. He found a way to tack back against the current. Had his overs gone for another 20 or 30 runs, we would have been in for a far tighter finale.
But Starc would contain, not be dictated to. Aside from the rising run rate, Sri Lanka’s big hitting before the 40th over was driven by the knowledge that Starc had overs in hand, and they needed to compensate from anyone else available.
The quarter-finalists in this World Cup are evenly matched. All have their flaws, none are rank outsiders to knock off any other. We’ve seen Pakistan beat South Africa, West Indies beat Pakistan, Ireland beat West Indies.
So much will come down to which individuals can go with their team’s momentum and carry matches away with them. Maxwell and Starc have proved to be two of the best at surfing those waves.
This article was first published on Wisden India.