Veteran all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has revealed his tempestuous relationship with former Australian coach Justin Langer which reached its low point during a verbal stoush at the Allan Border Medal night four years ago.
In Maxwell’s biography, The Showman, written with journalist Adam Collins, the Victorian star details his struggles with mental health, his struggles to get back into the Test team amid mixed messaging from Cricket Australia and his bizarre broken leg suffered two years ago which could have left him with an amputated foot.
He blasted the previous selectors for “a cruel blow underpinned with such dishonesty” when he was told he would be recalled to the Test team in 2018 and was then not named in the subsequent squad.
The 35-year-old known as “The Big Show” said he blew up at Langer at the AB Medal after the coach accused him of faking an elbow injury to miss a white-ball tour to South Africa to attend a friend’s wedding.
“When JL saw me, he was not pleased. He brought up the wedding, putting it to me directly that I had engineered missing the tour, and adding that my first games back for Australia should have been the priority,” he wrote in the book.
“I blew up. ‘Are you saying I’ve faked an injury?’ I said, probably with several expletives in there for decoration. He replied that I had been fine for the BBL final, I was going to be fine in time for the IPL, yet was suddenly unfit for this tour.
“I reminded him, forcefully again, that it was CA’s medical staff who had recommended this immediate operation, and that I couldn’t bat properly at the end of the Big Bash because of the problem that hadn’t then been diagnosed. He seemed to think I could tough it out and be fine to play, despite the scan and the doctor’s advice.
“It was only a couple of months since JL had been brilliant when realising that I was in strife, and had given the support I needed. But this latest episode was another example of where, for whatever reason, there was some sort of block for him when it came to me. I never could explain it.”
Maxwell told The Age that the Langer incident “was a bit of a low point” in his career.
“He went pretty hard. I didn’t know whether I should apologise or just walk away. It made it really awkward from then on in.”
Maxwell said that he and Langer patched up their differences and now have a friendly relationship. Langer resigned as coach three years ago after senior players in the team told CA that they wanted a fresh start with a new mentor and head office only offered him a short-term contract extension.
He also details in the book how he was told by the national selectors that he was going to be recalled for the Test tour of the UAE in 2018 after the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa.
Maxwell has played 142 ODIs and 113 T20s for Australia but just seven Tests and has not been selected since the 2017 tour of Bangladesh.
Glenn Maxwell celebrates taking a wicket in 2017 in Bangladesh. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
“I was so fresh and so excited that I had already packed my kit at home with all the bits and pieces I would need for Test cricket, including, of course, my baggy green,” he wrote.
“A bit keen, but confident about what was coming. And then it didn’t. The Test squad came out, the email landed, I scrolled down my phone, and my name was nowhere.
“It was such a cruel blow and underpinned with such dishonesty. Of course selectors have the prerogative to go different ways – things change. In this case, though, I’d been denied the chance to bolster my case in England, denied the A tour because I was deemed too senior, and after all that got the kick in the teeth. It was handled abysmally by all involved. The year that promised so much instead left me empty.”
Maxwell also describes the pain of the broken leg he suffered at a friend’s party in 2022 and how the mishap could have had dire consequences for the career and the rest of his life.
“My screams were loud and desperate. My leg was in bits, my ankle destroyed, bad enough that doctors were quietly bracing my wife for the even more traumatic possibility that my left foot would need to be amputated,” he wrote.
“I had done a good job of destroying my lower leg, not just snapping one bone but shattering pieces of it in the process, while chipping the other. As for my foot, well, it was a circus, busting all the ligaments plus the syndesmosis joint that keeps the whole show together down there.
“The swelling was at risk of escalating into compartment syndrome. This means that intense pressure on the muscles can lead to infection and necrosis. If they couldn’t get it under control in the very short term, the risks for the limb were existential. I might never walk properly again. I might never play cricket again. I might, if everything went wrong, lose the foot entirely.”
Thankfully, Maxwell made a full recovery and went on to play a starring role in last year’s ODI World Cup victory in India and is again a chance of making a recall to the Test team for the tour to Sri Lanka at the end of the summer.
The Roarhttps://https://ift.tt/pulM9Qz lifts the lid on foul-mouthed Langer run-in: ‘I blew up’ over coach’s faked injury accusations
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