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Maxwellball (JK)
For a normal person, getting a half volley outside off, switching your feet, and reverse sweeping a seam bowler for six would be the most incredible thing you do that day. Glenn Maxwell’s shot, but compared to the rest of his innings, it is room-temperature water.
As it was happening, people were wondering how good this knock was, Pat Cummins said this, “I think that is the greatest ODI innings I have ever seen, and I think it was the greatest ODI innings ever”.
Recency bias and the fact Cummins stood up the other end like the world’s most overpaid cheerleader will obviously play a part in why he thought that. But he is not alone, so the questions I think are fair to ask are, Is this the best knock by someone down the order? Is this the best knock by an Australian? And Is this the best knock at a World Cup?
But I think it’s also fair to ask, is this the best knock in one day innings ever?
Context matters. You need to know how was the game set up, because what Maxwell did was crazy, but it started a long time before that. In fact, this game had historical consequences even before Maxwell hit the crease. That is because Ibrahim Zadran played an elegant anchor innings in which he carried his bat, in ODI teams, for all 50 overs.
Why is this important? It was the first hundred in World Cups for Afghanistan.
A team known for their bowling, took their first real step towards maturation with this three-figure effort. Also, no one else made more than 30, so Afghaninstan’s score of 291 was on his back.
And this also means that their largest scores against the big three nations all come at this World Cup.
They have approached, yet have yet to breach, 300 in all three matches. And this was even more than the total that they defended against England.
There was one catch, they entered their defence with only one frontline seam bowler, Naveen Ul Haq. But luckily for them, he was awesome, and took Head with a ball that angeled in and then nipped away. But incredibly the other seamer, their all rounder Ashmutallah Omarzai, was just as good. David Warner showed absolutely no respect to what was a peach of a ball.
Between them they picked up four early wickets, not bad for a lone paceman and his sixth bowler friend. Australia were in all sorts.
But the reason they had no pace was because they went with extra spin. And that also got wickets. Marcus Stoinis played a reverse sweep when he rarely does.
So that was an odd choice. They lost another wicket to spin when Starc decided not to review a caught behind, that very much hit the stumps, not his bat.
Marnus was also run out when he took too long to respond to a Maxwell call.
So when Starc walked off, Australia were 91/7. Depending on your favourite win predictor, Australia had basically zero percentage chance of chasing a further two hundred runs at this point.
Australia’s last three batters if they all scored their top scores at the same time, they still wouldn’t account for half.
Australia needed 201 runs from 31.3 overs. Their only advantage was they’d scored quicker. Maxwell was 22 at this point.
But his innings almost never started. He entered when Omarzai was on a hat trick and first ball Afghanistan thought they had him. But their LBW appeal turned out to be an edge that didn’t carry.
That wasn’t the only close call. Maxwell mashes up a slog sweep and ends up slicing it up in the air and somehow it manages to end up in a gap as there is confusion over who should take it.
Then he gave another, but to Mujeeb Ur Rahman, one of the worst fielders in the world, and so it is no surprise to anyone at all that this chance is missed.
That same over Maxwell was given out LBW, he saw the replay and started walking. But somehow the ball was actually bouncing over the top of the stumps instead, so hawkeye saved him.
It seems that all these chances and let offs mean that Maxwell just thinks he might as well swing. And for a while Maxwell plays the innings in a fairly normal way. Well, not normal, but Maxwellball. In many ways he gets a free pass in an innings like this. The team can only lose, so his best chance is to play his game. Swing through the line, to take chances, and to basically score on his own. This is a perfect situation for him.
At the other end he had moral support, and little else, in Pat Cummins. The best scoring shot that Cummins played was when he missed one and it went to the rope for byes.
In fact, Cricinfo’s match impact stat suggests that all things considered, Cummins was a negative on the match. Though to be fair, it doesn't have a metric to look at how good a non-batting partner can be.
But I don’t want you to think Cummins didn’t do anything special. This was the longest innings he had ever played, and it wasn’t even close.
You want to know how much Cummins gave up for this innings, his strike rate dropped by seven points. True dedication to the cause. He could have scored more if Maxwell had been able to run, or even walk.
It was the fifth-highest partnership ever for seven wickets in cricket as well. The most in a World Cup. That might not sound amazing, but it allows me to show you this.
Pat Cummins made 12 runs, to Glenn Maxwell’s 179. Less a partnership, more one dude doing the work and the other guy ‘supervisoring’.
Maxwell certainly put the work in. He made the most runs every by a player batting at number six or lower, breaking Kapil Dev’s 40-year-old record.
He became the 11th player to score a double hundred in ODI cricket.
And that is pretty cool. But this is nowhere near the whole story.
This was the most runs when not opening and the first double hundred outside the men at the top.
That it happened from number six, and not say, three or four, is huge.
This is the highest score when chasing ever, I suppose you could add, in a successful chase as well if you want it.
But it's incredible to think no one has ever made more in the second innings.
And also, just the highest score by an Australian ever.
Considering this is the team with five ODI World Cups, is pretty amazing. That it was from a player they spent years trying to muzzle, turn ito their kind of player, is even more impressive.
This is all the players with 500 runs in World Cups. I have put two dots in for Maxwell, the green one was before today, when he had a 40 average and 162 strike rate.
The blue one is after today, now his runs per wicket is virtually 50, but his strike rate went down. He was already one of the biggest outliers and by a huge distance the fastest scorer in World Cups even before today.
And finally, in his career outside the World Cup, he has one hundred. In World Cups, he now has three. It would appear that the big show likes the big show.
He certainly gave a show here. After all that time in the Mumbai humidity, his body began to give way. The man who couldn’t sit on a golf cart recently was now shrivelling into a small hairy old troll that had been thrown in a fire.
Cramp is obviously something we have seen a lot of this World Cup. But the difference here was that if he didn’t make the runs, that was it. There was no one else. No matter how many times Adam Zampa went up and down the stairs, Maxwell was the difference between a win and a loss.
So he batted on, but he did so without running, so it meant that for a time, while Australia needed runs, Maxwell could not. So if the first part of his innings he attacked with a free pass from the drops and also the situation, well now he had to change how he batted again.
He chose a violent, gnarled up version. If he was taking risks before, now he was pouring kerosene on himself and walking over hot flames. He did all this locked into the crease, his feet in the same stance like a computer cricket player when you press the buttons too late. At this point Maxwell was little more than incredibly hairy arms trying to catch up to the ball.
With feet like that, you should not allow him to hit the ball this hard. He was standing like a woman who hurt her back moving a couch, while hitting the ball like Barry Bonds. This is not a normal thing to do, but this was not a normal innings.
So is this the best World Cup, or even ODI innings of all time? But how do you answer that when you are still lying in the wet spot of recency bias? Let’s give it a go.
I have got a rough list of the best hundreds ever made, in World Cups, and then all ODIs. The trickiest ones are the World Cup final knocks. Collis King was extraordinary, as was Clive Lloyd the previous World Cup final. In fact, Ben Stokes, Ricky Ponting, Aravinda de Silva and Adam Gilchrist have all played worthy best innings of all time knocks in World Cup finals. I don’t know how you rate an innings outside a World Cup final against ones in it.
What else has there been in World Cups? Well ABDV played extraordinary innings against the West Indie in 2015. Martin Guptill hit the highest score in the tournament against the same team. They are both incredible, but I'm not sure either one goes past this.
So then you have the two most similar innings, Kapil Dev recording from 17/5 to score all of India’s runs in 1983, and Kevin O’Brien chasing England’s tail without his top order in 2011. Let’s leave them for a moment.
What about outside World Cups? I think Sachin breaking cricket's four-minute mile by scoring the first double-hundred was something worthy of special mention. Herschelle Gibbs in the World Record game was just alien to how the game was played. And Sanath’s 189 was pretty special as well. But I don’t think any of them are right at the top.
If there was a non-World Cup innings, I would choose Viv Richards against England in 1984. He came in at 11/2, saw his team fall to 1102/7, and then at 166/9 as he batted with Mike Holding. The West Indies made 272, Richards 189, off 170 balls. This sense made no sense back then.
So if you want my way too soon greatest innings of all time shortlist not including games from the finals that I struggle with, I think the big three are Kapil Dev, Kevin O’Brien and Viv Richard. Maxwell can easily join that.
They all have their strengths and weaknesses. But there are differences. Kapil wasn’t chasing, O’Brien was never in that deep wicket trouble, and Viv was batting first. Also crucially, none of them did it while cramping, or not being able to run.
This was an injured player, who couldn’t run, with a blocking tail-ender, against two of the most economical bowlers, in a World Cup. It’s also a double hundred, from the number six position. And a strike rate of 157. Like, it smackes a lot of boxes for six.
The caveats are that Afghanistan panicked massively, dropped him, missed out on a DRS, and were probably a seamer short on a flat wicket. But you could probably make similar claims for the other three knocks as well.
Is this the greatest ODI innings all time, how the hell do you want me to make that call in the sexy shivering afterglow of what we just saw?
But this is what I know, it certainly fits the profile of an innings that is the greatest of all time. Side in trouble, scores all the runs on his own, is injured, and wins the game.
Years ago I got in an argument with my editor over a Maxwell innings. He said he wanted the emotion of the hundred, and I wrote a piece about how Maxwell is a real-life cartoon character playing cricket. His last over, his double hundred, his winning runs, they all came in this over as he looked shrivelled up and stuck on the crease by some invisible force. I have presented the case for whether it is the best ODI innings or not, you can make that decision.
The one thing we can all agree on is that this was not an innings by a normal person.
Stoinis shot (JK)
Marcus Stoinis was the 6th wicket to fall for Australia, and he played a reverse sweep. My thought was, does he even play the reverse sweep? He does it quite rarely, and the percentage is even lower in T20. Marcus Stoinis rarely plays the reverse sweep in professional cricket.
The only shot he averages less against is the slog shot. Worth noting that he is a very good strike rotator off the cover drive though. I thought it was an interesting choice that he went ahead with that shot. There is certainly a case to be made for Australia’s weakness against spin.
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