Too seen to shine: The Glenn Maxwell paradox

Writing in the foreword to Glenn Maxwell's autobiography, The Showman, Virat Kohli laid out the thinking behind bringing the all-rounder to Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Maxwell wouldn't just bolster the middle order, Kohli believed, but he would thrive at the "chance to stop being the centre of attention" - a freedom he hadn't enjoyed since his breakout 2014 campaign with Punjab Kings.

The equation was simple: shield Maxwell from the glare and he would likely find himself again. Just as he had in 2014, when he set the IPL alight with over 500 runs at a strike rate of 188. That season, Maxwell was pure electricity, perhaps because nobody expected him to be. Not after five IPL caps across two seasons for two different teams and no international hundreds.

At RCB, the plan seemed to work. In 2021, Maxwell delivered 513 runs, his second-best season tally, RCB's highest that year and the fifth-most among all batters. The team made it into the PlayOffs as Maxwell flourished with six half-centuries, another season record for him, while the burden of attention lay with bio-bubbles and the usual suspects, Kohli and AB de Villiers.

But once you have caught the eye, it stays fixed and soon enough, the whole world is watching. Over the next two seasons, Maxwell's returns faded. And in 2024, they collapsed. In 10 matches, he scored just 52 runs, a slump so pronounced that it prompted him to go to the management and ask to be dropped, and necessitated a 12-day break for his mental and physical health.

The timing made it stranger. Maxwell had entered the season after what he had called the best six months of his career. He was fresh off a 40-ball century against the Netherlands, the fastest ever at an ODI World Cup, which he followed up with a surreal double century against Afghanistan, when he batted on one leg in the heat and humidity of Mumbai to bring Australia back from the dead. His team rode that momentum into the final and eventually won the title. Again, that's the kind of player Maxwell is.

Even that night at Wankhede, the story didn't start as being fully about him. A looming upset by Afghanistan had the cricketing world sitting on the edge of their seats, and Maxwell's brilliance almost unfolded in the background. Until it did not. But maybe that's why it happened at all.

Because that's how it has tended to be with Maxwell. When you stop watching, when you forget to expect anything, he does something unforgettable.

The "freak and a madman," as Kohli revealed texting him after that double century, was now back in the spotlight for the IPL season that immediately followed the World Cup. Perhaps it was the attention, perhaps it was something else, but Maxwell's 52 runs stacked painfully across nine innings made it clear that RCB would have to look elsewhere come the next mega auction.

A year later, life came full circle for Maxwell, who found himself again at Punjab Kings. It didn't matter that he was bought for his lowest-ever price, taking a salary cut of over 60 percent; the belief in his potential remained. It still does.

This season, though, hasn't gone to plan. Again.

In 2025, he has scored just 48 runs in his first six innings, with 30 of them coming in a single knock. Nearly 47% of the balls he's hitherto faced have been dot balls. He's getting dismissed every eight balls and he's hit as many sixes as the number of demerit points he's accrued: one.

The numbers across the last two seasons make for a dire reading: 100 runs in 15 innings. This season, he's playing at roughly 6% more deliveries and edging far fewer of them. Instead, he's tended to miss the ball altogether, a sign that even the iota of form that you need to put bat to ball seems to have deserted him at the moment. In fact, across the last two seasons, he's missed more balls than any top-six batter who's not named Sunil Narine.

His struggles against spin this season have been particularly brutal. Five of his six dismissals this season have come against it. And there were early signs. In his first outing this season, he reverse-swept Sai Kishore first ball, missed altogether, was given lbw, and walked off having collected the most ducks in IPL, only for replays to show that the ball was missing the stumps.

PBKS persisted with him for the starting six games of the season but he didn't look like he could buy a run. If it wasn't carrom balls from Maheesh Theekshana and R Ashwin, then it was the googly from Varun Chakaravarthy. With no visible signs of improvement, he was left out against RCB. That it came in a rain-trimmed match at Chinnaswamy, a ground built for sixes and a situation tailor-made for players like him, said everything that needed to be said.

In a clear attempt to spark something, head coach Ricky Ponting turned to Maxwell against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens. After a couple of matches on the bench, both against RCB, Maxwell was brought back and pushed up the order, even ahead of Shashank Singh, the team's in-form finisher. The score was 160 for 2 in the 15th over, with Shreyas Iyer well set at the other end. With a total of 200 almost guaranteed, it was a calculated move: give Maxwell a cushion, free him up and hope he could rediscover his mojo.

But Maxwell lasted all of eight balls, bowled for the third consecutive time, falling once again to Chakaravarthy. It's not a surprise then that PBKS have increasingly looked at Nehal Wadhera as the spin-hitter in the middle overs.

Ponting has, of course, been through this before. Back in 2018, during another difficult season coaching Maxwell at Delhi Capitals, he was asked at a press conference what was wrong with the all-rounder's form. His answer: "I wish I knew why."

Seven years later, Ponting finds himself in the same place, looking for the same answer.

For coaches, Maxwell presents a unique test: how long do you wait for a genius to flick the switch? The numbers tell you to move on, the heart tells otherwise. The trick, and the tragedy of it all, is that you may never know until it's too late. And it must be particularly difficult for Ponting, who goes a long way back with Maxwell.

It's no easier as a fan. Most of the experience of following Maxwell is spent hoping. Hoping that this is the day he strings together an innings so magical that you wonder why you ever doubted him. When it doesn't come, the hope turns into frustration, and eventually into apathy. You stop watching him. You stop waiting. You look away. And it's precisely then that he stuns you.

That's the paradox of Glenn Maxwell. The less you expect, the less you watch, the freer he seems to be. It's a lesson Kohli understood well when he suggested the idea of having Maxwell at RCB. It's a lesson Ponting must be wrestling with now. It's the lesson every fan must learn, painfully and often.

Two days before Punjab Kings' match against Chennai Super Kings at Chepauk, at an otherwise lively practice session, Maxwell cut a lonely figure. While some batters slogged it out in the center nets and others in the side nets, he hovered at the dressing-room door, half in, half out, caught in a quiet limbo. For a few minutes, he kept everyone guessing: would he step out to practice or not? Eventually, he slipped back inside, into the obscurity behind the frosted glass doors of the away dressing room. Hidden and shielded, into the kind of environment where he thrives... until he doesn't.

Because with Maxwell, the miracle only seems to happen when the attention shifts. Perhaps the trick then is to simply stop looking.