There was a
time when Aravinda de Silva would walk into the ground with just one intention
– to literally smash every ball out of the park. Once he got going, he was hard
to stop... he would try shots that others thought impossible, he went about
re-inventing the wheel, so much so that his berserker brand of batting earned
him the nickname ‘Mad Max.’ “It was after the 1986 tour of India that they
started calling me Mad Max. I guess it was probably the way I approached the
game in the initial stages of my career. I tried to get on top of the bowler
right from the start and I believed a lot in myself. I was able to do that at a
very young age,” De Silva once said in the interview. Cut to day-night match in
the circus known as the IPL. The venue was Sharjah. Cheteshwar Pujara was in
the middle when Glenn Maxwell walked in to bat with the score on 2-10.
Pujara was
struggling to get the ball beyond the 30-yard circle. He was giving it his all
but the ball simply wasn’t going anywhere – bringing back memories of VVS
Laxman trying to slog in his first IPL season. Then, Maxwell, who is also known
as Mad Max, stepped up and showed how it is done. The first four balls got him
two runs and then he decided he had had enough of a look in. The fifth ball
disappeared over deep square leg; the sixth was smashed over mid-on for four.
The 25-year-old Aussie had kick-started an innings of manic proportions.
Maxwell’s ability to play without any fear makes his really hard to plan for.
Take for instance, the three reverse-swept fours he hit off Rajat Bhatia in the
11th over. Most batsmen will play the reverse sweep maybe once in an over to
throw the bowler off his line – it is after all a risky shot but Maxwell played
it so often and so well that it even threw the field settings in disarray.
A look at
Maxwell’s wagon wheel reveals he is just as deadly on both sides of the wicket
– 41 runs on the off-side and 48 runs on the leg-side. He manipulated the field
with his unorthodox shot-making and then when the gaps appeared he used
classical strokes to make the most of the lapse. By the time, he was dismissed
after making 89 off 45 balls (8 fours, 6 sixes) – he had done enough to give
KXIP a fighting chance despite Pujara’s innings. David Miller came in a
finished the job but Maxwell set it up. Now, he has done this before. In the
first match of IPL 7 against CSK, he scored 95 off 43 balls as KXIP had chased
down a target of 206. In the World T20, he smashed 74 in a losing effort
against Pakistan. But the manner in which he took on Saeed Ajmal showcased a
talent beyond just big-hitting. In February 2014, Victoria lost six wickets for
only nine runs in the worst ever start to a Sheffield Shield innings. Then
Maxwell (127) came in and hit an 89-ball hundred in a losing cause but it
guided his team to a respectable total.
In August
last year, in a match between India A and Australia A, Maxwell came in to bat
with his side’s total on 152-8. He responded with typical belligerence to smash
an unbeaten 145 of 79 balls. There are more such instances but what becomes
evidently clear from these knocks is that nothing can faze Maxwell. His belief
in his ability to do what others consider impossible is the gift of confidence
built on consistently achieving the targets. "I don't get burdened by pressure,"
he told IPLT20.com after the game. "Pressure is something that you put on
yourself. I put pressure on myself before a game or before I go out to bat. But
once when I go out there to bat, I just enjoy it and have a little bit of fun.
I look at the total and take it from there." At this point, Mumbai Indians
must be wondering why they left him on their bench for a majority of last
season. Perhaps, the idea was to keep him away from the other teams. If it was
that, then it was a master stroke because now Mad Max has been set loose and no
one is safe.
0 comments:
Post a Comment