“Hard to keep that deadpan, killer instinct during the game and just ignoring people,”: Maxwell opens up on outdated abrasive cricket tradition in Australia

Australia all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has stated that the tradition round Australian cricket groups being abrasive and never mingling effectively with the opposition gamers till a sequence/match was over made him uneasy at first levels of his profession.

In a current interplay with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Maxwell stated, “It’s weird how if you’re normal to people you actually make friends with them, isn’t it? It’s something I’m really thankful for, I think even looking back to my first couple of years with the Australian side, there was still a bit of that ‘we’re not friends with them during the series, we wait until after the series and you can have your conversations then’.”

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He additional added, “But you play with everyone throughout the year. I played with [Wanindu] Hasaranga for two seasons in the IPL, then I’m playing a series against him [in Sri Lanka], of course I’m catching up with him between games and talking about different things. [Dushmantha] Chameera as well, the same thing.”

Over the years, the popularity of Australian groups taking the sport exhausting to their opposition, moving into their heads has been well-known. Part of it was highlighted within the new Ben Stokes documentary, Phoenix from The Ashes, through which the Australian gamers will be heard systematically sledging and succeeding in dismissing the England gamers. Maxwell, who has performed cricket in a number of franchise leagues world wide, believes will probably be exhausting for one to outlive in modern cricket in the event that they hold transferring with such mindset.

“You’re just crossing paths with players all over the place, whether county cricket, IPL, all around the world, so it’s hard to keep that deadpan, killer instinct during the game and just ignoring people,” he stated.

“You probably won’t survive in the game if you keep doing that. There’s going to be all of a sudden a reputation about you, and teams won’t want to pick you up. But to be able to play the game hard and fair but still keep your friendships intact, I think is more the modern way of playing. I know it’s more enjoyable for me, because I love having fun and I love playing with a smile on my face. To be able to play against friends who I consider family sometimes and not shy away from the competition, but still be able to have a good hard contest and never have it get in the way of our friendships off the field.”

The all-rounder is at present a part of the Australia squad for the restricted overs sequence in opposition to Zimbabwe that begins this Sunday in Queensland.