Glenn Maxwell addresses Adelaide gig incident, reveals Twenty20 ton almost didn’t happen

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“We know we’ve got four international games until the World Cup now, it comes around pretty quick, and I’ll just try to make sure I’m in as good a space as I can be for that tournament.”

Asked whether he had reflected much or intended to make many changes to his behaviour, Maxwell did not sound too eager to look back.

“Nah, just moved on pretty quickly,” he said. “I was back in training on Monday, so I was pretty good.”

The opportunity to dominate West Indies at Adelaide Oval, and make a fifth T20 international century in front of his parents Neil and Joy, only arrived after Maxwell convinced the selectors not to rest him from the game ahead of the long-haul trip to Perth for the final game on Tuesday night.

“Originally I was supposed to not be playing, I was going to be rested,” Maxwell said. “I sort of talked them into, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind playing this one, my family’s going to be here’, so they changed their mind, which was nice. I just thought, ‘Imagine if I was rested for this game, they made the effort to come over here’, but they had a Barossa tour yesterday so they were pretty happy.”

The night’s conclusion was pockmarked by a dispute over whether the Australians had appealed for the runout of last man Alzarri Joseph. Umpire Gerard Abood, who wears a batting helmet in the middle, did not hear the inquiries of far-flung fielders, and Spencer Johnson, who took the stumps, made no gesture at all.

This led to unsavoury scenes as Tim David asserted the fact he had appealed, while David Warner referred to the moment as a case of “umpire error” with Joseph clearly out of his ground. Abood chided the players for getting into “really poor” territory before they resumed their posts for the next ball.

“I think the umpire deemed that no one had appealed, and there was a few of us that thought we did appeal,” Maxwell said. “To be fair I understand, it wasn’t like it was a screaming appeal from everyone but probably one of those things where you expect it to go up to the third umpire, we thought it was pretty close and there were a few of us putting our hands up.

“We sort of stopped, thinking he’d sent it upstairs, and everyone was turned around watching the big screen and the batter had already started walking off. So it was just confusing – thank God it didn’t cost the game. Just one of those weird rules in cricket, we should probably just be a bit louder with our appeals.”

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The hallmark of a Maxwell innings like this one, or his double century against Afghanistan in India, is that once he is settled at the crease, it feels as though there is simply no safe place to put the ball. Teammate Johnson had remarked that Maxwell predicted a hundred before the game.

“In my brain I’ve got easy boundaries, where I feel like I’ve moved the bowler into a position where I know where they’re going to bowl and I’ve got a gap in mind,” Maxwell said. “Anything else I try to react to and adapt to and I feel like a couple of times I was just getting two and the ball was going away for four.

“It’s amazing when you can get a read on a bowler and you can face multiple balls in a row and put them under pressure. Even if they bowl a good ball, you’re actually in a good position to go ‘OK, I know what the good ball looks like and how I’m going to adjust to it if he bowls it again’.”