When I was 18 I bought Radiohead’s Kid A. I hated it, it didn’t have ‘real songs’ on it like The Bends and OK Computer, it was weird, jumbled and different. To the cricket purist, Glenn Maxwell’s batting may appear weird, jumbled and different.
The third-ball reverse sweep while batting three in a Test match, the first-ball leave in the BBL – I don’t blame people for saying Maxwell is jumbled.
But it’s more than that, this isn’t just an impetuous slogger, a T20 flash in the pan who’s luckily getting on a roll against a few weak opponents.
Maxwell’s approach represents something entirely different, a recalibration of what we know as batting, and Maxwell is fast becoming the most compelling on-field individual in cricket and indeed Australian sport.
If nothing else, Maxwell is brave. Over 130 years of players batting a certain way conditions us to what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. Purists might be harsher, saying Maxwell’s batting can be reckless and selfish. Maxwell was shaken by the intense criticism levelled at him but thankfully he has held his nerve. He’s challenging what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in batting, and when he comes off he takes game away quicker than anyone has before.
Regular batsman leave balls early, play straight, work singles, nudge and nurdle before expanding. Maxwell’s trick involves a rhythm all his own, he generally hits a boundary on ball one or two and then he follows by reverse-sweeping a medium pacer to the fence. That’s not meant to happen, but it’s happening regularly. As fans we might have to get our heads around what that means – he’s not being a smart arse, that’s the way the guy bats.
For argument’s sake let’s say Australia play New Zealand in the World Cup final. Trent Boult and Tim Southee are swinging the ball around corners and have us 4-40. Maxwell strides to the crease – what do you want him to do?
Do you want to him to play straight and prod at the ball with three slips in place, the tried and true method of getting a batsman out for 130 years of international cricket? Or should Maxwell forget that 130 years and look at the ball swinging away, switch the hands and just help the ball over slips for a boundary?
He looks a fool if he gets out, but who is to say that Maxwell’s approach isn’t a whole lot more logical? Who can play an out-swing ball anyway? This is the prism we need to judge Maxwell through now. We know the good is devastating, but maybe we need to re-evaluate the ‘bad’.
Maxwell is turning what we know on its head. He’s probably not a Radiohead fan but you can liken Maxwell’s batting to hip-hop’s deconstruction of rock music; he cuts and pastes the most destructive elements of batting, adds a few of his own inventions, and rearranges it in a whole new order that puts enormous pressure on a bowler. His game plan has no negating. Maxwell looks at the field and decides the places where he is going to hit the ball before the bowler starts his run.
Sure he uses instincts to adjust, but he has spots picked out from the start and he combines power with supple wrists that put the ball to places you don’t think are possible. And that’s his first option, not the traditional wait for a bad ball, his worst case option involves a bunt down the ground where he still gets a single. He’s scarily showing us that with this approach there’s not many good balls.
Maxwell’s innings have the ability to take a game away, and while the Australian selectors may have crucified him with his muddled roles in his brief Test stints, they must be applauded for backing this approach in the long game. They get that this is a genre-shifting talent.
Then there’s the aesthetic side of his batting, as wanky as it sounds, Maxwell’s batting as art. He is remixing batting and creating something new. Like all good art it shocks and provokes, but ultimately it’s thrilling and rewarding, we’re starting to get the reward now. Maxwell coming in to bat is making one-day cricket watchable again as we’re seeing batting redefined, and it’s all the more enjoyable in one-day cricket as opposed to T20 cricket as the audacity seems greater, and the enjoyment longer-lasting and more meaningful.
Would Maxwell work in Test cricket? That may be a question we need to look at ourselves for. Would we cricket fans allow Maxwell to work in Test cricket? Can we change the way we think and not cause a chorus when he’d dismissed playing a reverse-sweep second ball? Can we change the way we judge what is ‘proper batting’? Can we say that a Maxwell dismissal is not any more ugly than a defensive prod edged to the keeper? Maybe we need to adapt.
I for one would make sure I’m near a TV set anytime Maxwell bats in Test cricket, it would be drama, high art and perhaps farce all rolled into one. Winning Test matches is great, but a greater contribution in the bigger picture may be making people watch Test matches, knowing that the unorthodoxy will result in winning them in a whirlwind all of your own making.
I was hoping Kid A would contain more of the anthemic verse-chorus-verse hits of previous Radiohead albums, it didn’t and I was left hollow. But over time it’s become my favourite Radiohead album and is now acclaimed as the critic’s choice of album of its era, an appreciation of how something challenging the norm can be the most rewarding.
Let’s hope Glenn Maxwell keeps challenging the norm and we all (eventually) get to watch and savour the rewards.
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