“The amount of times I’ve jumped into a pool and gone,‘Oh that was a bit more shallow than I thought’,and not even a scratch or a bruise or rolled ankle. To do something that’s just nothing ... a little bit slippery,and all of a sudden there goes a couple of months.”
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Upon arriving at emergency,Maxwell had expected to be taken straight in for surgery,but was instead given painkillers and left to wait until the Sunday afternoon to meet with his surgeon and have the fracture re-set. It was not until the Monday night that he was able to rest.
“I probably didn’t sleep for two days while I was in agony,so it was a pretty horrible couple of days,” he said. “My wife was unbelievable through it all,she was so calm,she was brilliant.”
Maxwell will visit his orthopedic surgeon on Wednesday for a further update about the state of his leg,and from there will start to map out a plan with experts for how and when he can begin physical rehabilitation.
Missing the Big Bash League,where he captains the Melbourne Stars,will be difficult for Maxwell,but so too is the thought that the injury has all but ruled out his chances of touring India with the Test team in the new year,after sizing up a couple of red-ball matches beforehand.
“I think these two games are going to be the hardest to watch,knowing they would have been a great opportunity to play red-ball cricket again,” Maxwell said. “There’s a time limit on when they’re going to announce that squad to India and,to be fair,there’s a high chance that I won’t make it.
“They’re obviously going have to see me playing cricket,and they’re going to have to take a big risk if they do take me. But I think that’s probably why I don’t want to sort of set any dates or timelines of when I can get back.
“I would dearly love to be OK for that,but I’m a slave to how my body recovers and how quickly I can get the strength back into it,and then get back playing cricket again.”
‘That’s all we cared about’:star all-rounder clarifies Cup comments
Resting his badly broken leg at home,Maxwell has rejected the characterisation of his World Cup comments that“it doesn’t mean anything” to be eliminated from the event before the semi-final stage.
In the aftermath of Australia’s final Cup game against Afghanistan in Adelaide,Maxwell was asked if players could afford to dwell on the possibility - subsequently fulfilled - that they would miss the chance to defend the title won in the UAE in 2021.
His response,balancing the relentless nature of the international schedule with a genuine sense of disappointment in the team about not being able to display their best cricket at the pointy end of the tournament,was widely construed as saying the Australian side did not care about their elimination. Understandably,that did not sit well with Maxwell.
“Well the question was ‘do you dwell on not winning the World Cup’ and I sort of said you can’t afford to dwell because you’ve got so much cricket coming up,so there’s no real time to do it,” Maxwell told Cricket Australia’s Unplayable podcast.
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“And I sort of said it doesn’t really matter,but it was more it doesn’t really matter if you dwell or not,because if you dwell,you’ve already missed a game or two,you’ve missed an opportunity to play well for your country,and if you don’t dwell you’re focusing on your next game.
“That’s what I was sort of referring to,so it’s up to the individual if they wanted to dwell on it,but there’s not enough time to. So when I saw the headlines,I was like ‘well,they’ve just made up a headline to a question that’s completely different’. That’s what that was all about,and that’s basically when I looked at that and went ‘well bugger media,they can go stuff itself’.”
Maxwell noted that this was emblematic of a wider reticence among players at times to make their true feelings known,for fear of how that would be churned into headlines across the globe.
“A lot of players do that,because when they see headlines out of something that gets taken completely out of context,they do get a little bit shy and sort of stand-offish from saying exactly what’s on their mind or exactly how they feel,” he said. “Because if it gets taken the wrong way it makes them look bad,and it makes them look ostracised from the rest of the team,saying something that’s not on the team’s radar at all.
“I’m not saying for one second that we as an Australian team didn’t care. At no stage was I saying that,but all of a sudden that’s coming out as a headline and I was like ‘well that’s not true at all’. We certainly cared,that’s all we cared about at that time. We wanted to win the World Cup,but it was taken out of our hands by Finn Allen for the first four overs of the tournament and a washed out England game. All of a sudden we’re gone.”
Asked about whether sections of the public expected a certain “performative disappointment” from the team,Maxwell explained why trying to stay level was key to a long and fruitful career.
“I think if you go so high and so low during the ups and downs of cricket,it’s just going to be such a tired run and you’re going to be cooked,” he said. “You’re going to be burnt out,you’re going to be drained in no time,and we were certainly disappointed we didn’t win the World Cup,but we were also very realistic about why we didn’t win.
“It’s a quick tournament,T20 can be so fickle,we understand that,and that’s why we were so amped at how we won the World Cup last year. Everything clicked into place,and you need that to win a tournament like that. Pakistan lost two games during the tournament and somehow made the final,which is unheard of.”