'We certainly cared': Maxwell hits back at claims Australian team's not passionate enough

Glenn Maxwell has flatly rejected claims the care factor has gone out of Australian cricket, adamant comments he made after the Twenty20 World Cup were misconstrued.

Maxwell is one week into a lengthy recovery from a badly broken leg, which threatens to end his dream of a Test comeback in India early next year.

The Victoria all-rounder was injured at a 50th birthday party earlier this month, after he slipped on wet astroturf and a friend fell on his left leg.

But he saved the most emotion for hitting back at claims Australia’s players were not fussed about the Twenty20 World Cup exit.

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Asked whether Australia would dwell on the result after their final group game, Maxwell had claimed there was little time for reflection given the tight turnaround into the ODI series against England.

(Photo by Sarah Reed/Getty Images)

His comments, and subsequent headlines, drew criticism and claims Australia were not passionate enough about their results.

“I’m not saying for one second that we as an Australian team didn’t care,” Maxwell told a cricket.com.au podcast. 

“That’s not true. We certainly cared. That was all we cared about at the time, we wanted to win the World Cup. 

“But it was taken out of our hands by (New Zealand’s) Finn Allen for four overs at the start, and getting washed out against England (in the group game).”

Maxwell said it was hard to be too upset with the Australian team’s performance, given they lost as many games in this year’s campaign as in last year’s win.

Meanwhile, he said the biggest disappointment of his injury was missing a Sheffield Shield return for Victoria and conceded that a spot on the February Test tour to India was now unlikely.

Maxwell has not played Test cricket since 2017, but was close to a return in both matches against Sri Lanka earlier this year.

The 34-year-old explained his injury had come when he got up to pretend to chase a friend at the party, before he slipped. 

He then spent 50 minutes under a marquee on the ground before giving up on the wait for an ambulance and making his own way to hospital, to discover a shattered left fibula and ruptured ligaments at the top of his foot.

At this stage, there is no exact timeline on his return.

(Photo by Chris Hyde – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)

“I did a good job of it for such an innocuous thing,” Maxwell said. “This is the frustrating thing about it all. 

“I have done some dumb things on the field and off the field and I have never even come close to looking like injuring myself. 

“The amount of times I have jumped into a pool and thought, ‘That was a bit more shallow than I thought’. And not even a bruise, scratch or rolled ankle. 

“Just to do something that is a nothing incident, just a little slippery. And then all of a sudden there goes a couple of months.”