Cricket World Cup: No feet, no lower body power, all hands – how Glenn Maxwell smashed the greatest ODI knock of all time

His balance component has a few ingredients: the knee-flex that allows him to spring off from the ball of his feet, the subsequent postural-sway that allows a smooth transfer of weight that makes feet movement almost unnecessary and the associated hip-turn that powers the bat speed to and through the contact zone. All this is done with boyish enthusiasm but on this evening the hobbler sustained an adrenaline rush and fed on admirable will to produce an aftermath of wonder.

 

 

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Just minutes after the most audacious ODI knock, three Pakistan former players were entrusted with the unenviable task of decoding how Maxwell could conjure those monstrous sixes when he was battling severe cramps and couldn’t use his lower body and legs. With feet movement severely restricted, how did he just let his hands do the job?

Shoaib Malik, Misbah-ul-Haq and Wasim Akram managed to weave in insights even as they made it seem they were just shooting the breeze at A Sports studio. The three also spoke about the influence of playing multi-sports in enhancing the hand-eye coordination. They cited the examples of AB de Villiers (hockey, tennis), Maxwell (scratch golfer, tennis), and their own examples (hockey for both Malik and Misbah) in their developmental years.

Malik came up with a demonstration that’s worth a watch. “Power hitting is not about feet movement,” Malik would declare. “It’s about arm extension. It’s about your base. It’s about flexing the knees.” He then squatted into the crease to mimic Maxwell’s stance. “Since he couldn’t move his feet much, he took the base before the delivery itself”.

Usually, just around the time the bowler delivers the ball, the batsmen move back or forward or crouch and set-up their ‘base’. Maxwell preponed the movement; settling into a slightly crouched base position even before the release.

“It’s important that the weight is evenly placed on both feet,” Malik continued. “Because, then the arms can go through the line of the ball, unimpeded. The smooth flow of arms is the key. Patle log bhi bahut chakke maarte hain (even the slim unmuscular ones hit long sixes,” said the slim Malik. “When he got cramps, he only used his arms. When you swing the bat, the arms shouldn’t cramp up, towards the body – it should be free and smooth. Maxwell did that.”

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Often, on his day, Hardik Pandya does it. The Indian big-hitter turns his back leg from his hip and not from his knee, when he is driving through the line, allowing unimpeded movement for the bat swing and greater speed to scythe through the line. Maxwell’s was somewhat similar on this day. It would have been understandable if it was a golf ball that he was hitting like this. It’s one thing to make the bat look like an extension of arms if he were hitting a stationary ball but to meet wood on moving leather so adventurously like this without any feet movement is another thing altogether.

Romantics of earlier era used to tell a lovely story about Pakistan’s Majid Khan. It’s a lesson that helps us understand Maxwell’s incredulous knock. It’s a story told by Majid’s Glamorgan colleague Peter Walker in his book ‘Cricket Conversations’. The incident occurred during a nets session after a game against Sussex where Jim Parks Jr had put the Glamorgan bowlers – including Don Sheperd – to sword. Majid Khan’s team-mates reckoned it was the speed and precision of Park Jr’s that helped him.

Australia’s Glenn Maxwell plays a shot during the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup match between Australia and Afghanistan in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (AP)

Majid, a silent spectator to the discussion, spoke at the end, “You don’t need any footwork in batting, just hands and eye”. That astonishing statement was contested hotly and his team-mates demanded him to prove it on field.

Over to Walker: “Within fifteen minutes, three of our front-line bowlers, including Sheperd, lined up in a net outside with Majid padded up at the other end about to have his theory demolished. For twenty minutes, on a rough, unprepared, and quite-impossible-to-bat-on wicket where the ball flew, shot, seamed and turned, Majid Khan stood absolutely motionless, parrying the ball as it lifted, cutting or hooking unerringly if it were wide, driving with frightening power if over pitched and swaying out of harm’s way when it lifted unexpectedly.

“Unless he allowed it, not a single ball passed his bat, not a chance was given, not a false stroke made. The bowlers were at full throttle, yet by our own reckoning afterwards that twenty-minute session must have yielded the young Pakistani around 75 runs! He had just defied every known textbook instruction, improvised strokes that just did not exist and, without uttering a word, had emphatically made his point. In the presence of genius, no rules apply.”

Malik came up with another fascinating facet, this time on Afghanistan spinners. “They are all low-trajectory bowlers. They don’t flight. The ball never goes above the eye level and dips. It’s not like Keshav Maharaj or Mitch Santner – they wouldn’t have ever got hit like this. These low-trajectory bowlers made it a tad easier for Maxwell to use his hands and crash through the line,” Malik said.

Akram also pointed out how the seamers could have gone well outside the off stump from round the stumps like Dwayne Bravo does to force Maxwell to stretch and use his legs. Even that isn’t easy, Misbah warned. “Maxwell would then use the pace and hit his reverse laps and switch hits. They would have to use a lot more slower ones in that line – that would have probably made his task a bit more difficult.”

But all the three veterans were unanimous that all this was mere theories. ‘Never seen this kind of a knock in my lifetime’ was their call. No one would argue with that.

Simon Helmot, a coach in the Big Bash and IPL, remembers a moment in a dugout in 2011 after Maxwell had almost single handedly won a game for Victoria Bushrangers against Tasmania Tigers in the One-day Cup. Coming in at 157/6 with less than 10 overs left, Maxwell smashed Australia’s fastest domestic half-century (27-ball 61, the fifty came off 19) to help chase down 269. His previous highest for the team was 33.

“When I congratulated him all excited, he goes, ‘You look surprised, coach. That’s what I do!’ and everyone laughed. It was the breakout match for us, and for him,” Helmot tells this newspaper. Even Helmot was surprised at the knock against Afghanistan though. Even Maxwell has said how ‘he is still numb’. In time, he will realise he played the kind of a knock that only a generation raised on gaming platforms can truly understand.

As for the rest of us, Misbah-ul-Haq offered the only sane summary: “Jab dil kar raha tha.. chakka, (Misbah would mimic a lap shot), chakka (reverse lap shot). Unbelievable.”