RCB’s Glenn Maxwell Drops Himself from IPL 2024 after Poor Performance, Takes Mental and Physical Break

Royal Challengers Bengaluru player Glenn Maxwell has voluntarily decided to take a break to recharge after a poor IPL 2024 season. The overseas player requested the RCB team management to choose someone else in his place against the SRH match.

The 35-year-old Maxwell has had a dismal Indian Premier League 2024 season before the match against SRH on Monday. He had scored only 32 runs in six innings at an average of 5.33. There were a few rumours that he had sat out to treat a thumb injury but that was not the case.

“For me, it was a pretty easy decision,” Maxwell said after RCB succumbed to their sixth defeat in seven matches.

“I went to Faf [du Plessis] and the coaches after the last game and said I felt it was probably time we tried someone else. I have been in this situation in the past where you can keep playing and get yourself deeper into a hole. I think now is a good time for me to give myself a bit of a mental and physical break, and get my body right. If I’m required to get in during the tournament, I can hopefully get back into a really solid mental and physical space where I can still have an impact.”

“We have had a pretty big deficiency straight after the powerplay, which has been my area of strength over the last couple of seasons. I felt like I wasn’t contributing positively with the bat, and with the results and the position we find ourselves on the table, I think it’s a good time to give someone else an opportunity to show their wares, and hopefully, someone can make that spot their own.”

Maxwell, in contrast to his IPL run, was in rich form coming into the tournament. In 17 T20s since November, he had 552 runs at an average of 42.46 and a strike rate of 185.85. In this period he scored 2 centuries as well.

IPL 2024, though, has been a horror show. He began with a golden duck against the CSK. Since then, he has had 2 more ducks and played more than 5 balls just once against KKR, where he made a 19-ball 28, helped in large part by two dropped catches.

“T20 cricket can be like that sometimes – it’s a pretty fickle game,” he said. “Even if you look at the first game, I ran one off the middle of the bat to the keeper. I picked up the length well, and saw a scoring opportunity, but opened the face a little bit too much. When you are going well, that goes wide of the gloves, you get a boundary, you are 4 of 1, and you are away for the tournament.

RCB vs SRH IPL 2024 Match Highlights

“I probably just haven’t got away – it’s as simple as that. In the first few games, I feel I made reasonably good decisions, but I was still finding ways to get out. It can happen in T20 cricket and when it snowballs like that, you can go searching and try too hard and forget the basics of the game.”

RCB vs SRH turned out to be a high-scoring one. Batting first, SRH posted 287 runs before RCB replied with 262 runs. The aggregate 549 runs and SRH’s 287 going down as IPL records.

Maxwell was asked if, in hindsight, he wished he had played on Monday. “I did notice during the powerplay that the pitch was not as slow and two-paced as it has been in the first few games,” he said with a smile. “And I realised it was probably a bad game to miss; it would have been nice to be out there batting.

“But as I said, I wanted to give myself not just the physical break but also the mental break to give myself the right to play professional cricket. I take a lot of pride in my performance, and I put in a lot of hard work behind the scenes to get my body right for every game. And it has been a pretty tough struggle, given my body is on the wrong side of 30. I think that physical and mental toll probably just wore me down a little bit.”

This is not the first time that Maxwell has struggled for runs. In IPL 2020, then representing Punjab Kings, he scored just 108 runs, without a single six, in 11 innings, at an average of 15.42.

“That was probably a different scenario,” Maxwell said. “Back then the thing that was hurting me was I was bowling well. So I was playing more as a spinner who was used at the back end [with the bat]. We had KL [Rahul] and Mayank [Agarwal] who were the two leading run-scorers in the competition at that time, so there weren’t a lot of balls left in the game. So I wasn’t able to get any match rhythm. And when I was, it was only for a few balls here and there.

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“So I said the same thing to the Kings XI management back at the time, that we can have an overseas bowler in my place. But we didn’t have an offspinner as well. So I sort of played as an overseas offspinner who could bat a little bit.

“The management here has been outstanding. We’ve been working together on taking a fair bit of ownership and the off-field leadership staff is trying to help out as much as they can. Unfortunately, runs just haven’t come the way they should have when you are in really good form. I don’t think I’ve had a better six months in cricket leading into this tournament. So it’s frustrating when it ends up like this. But if I can get my body and my mind right, there’s no reason I can’t finish the tournament well if I do get another opportunity.”