Glenn Maxwell; superhuman one minute, human the next

Glenn Maxwell has always gone places quickly. He was only 24 years old, and had played just 17 games for Australia, when he was bought for a million USD at the 2013 IPL auction by Mumbai Indians. It had been an overnight, meteoric rise, on the back of one innings everyone cited in particular. Its viral highlights clip would be my eleven-year-old self's most-watched YouTube video of the year, replayed in anticipation of his arrival in the IPL.

In 2011, Maxwell had come out to bat at No. 8 in a one-day game for Victoria. Even back then, his unorthodox game appeared complete. He contorted into leg-side glances and lofted drives with his powerful wrists, scoring Australia's then quickest List A fifty, off 19 deliveries. Victoria romped to an unlikely last-ball win after needing 100 off 52.

But when Maxwell arrived in India, MI did not have a spot for him in the XI. He had played two games for Delhi Daredevils the year before; he would play only three in this edition. "I was probably acting my age and being more interested in how many social media followers it would get me," he confesses in The Showman, his autobiography.

Even during this early period of his career, he wore his stubble, chewed his gum, and rocked his hairy forearms. At least to a subcontinental teenager like me, he was the quintessential Australian cricketing alpha. But through these initial years of waiting to become a star, then becoming one, Maxwell has lived an engrossingly contradictory public life. His irreverent batting - back when reverse ramps and scoops and unnameable shots behind the wicket were still almost taboo - made him one of the world's first properly viral cricketers. He was, at times, also a reminder of its pitfalls.

After a near-fourteen year career, Maxwell has announced his retirement from international cricket. He bowed out of ODIs in June 2025, and last played during Australia's first-round exit in the T20 World Cup this February, which signalled the side's need for a revamp.

Maxwell's initial fame, and being trolled on social media for his millionaire price tag in the IPL, is now both a faint memory and the start of a pattern that plagued him through his career. He has often had to wait through long periods of scrutiny for his inimitable highs: think of his 2014 IPL run with Kings XI Punjab, or his record-breaking 51-ball century in the 2015 ODI World Cup against Sri Lanka, or even his 108 in Old Trafford in the middle of the pandemic in 2020, taking Australia from 73 for 5 to a win while chasing 303.

If Maxwell's approach to the game, and its patchwork returns, have been described as an enigma, the sentiment has been repeated often enough for it to veer on cliché. Especially because he has always been one of cricket's most honest chats, in interviews and on social media, while still an active cricketer. He even announced his retirement on a podcast - the Final Word, hosted by Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon - before posting any statement on his own socials.

But Maxwell has always had an uneasy relationship with the popular imagination. He does not like the moniker Big Show - "it made me sound like I drink my own bathwater" - and it often took on an ironic tinge in his early years. Even his one-off moments often play like the greatest hits, like his double-wicket maiden against Pakistan in 2014, or his outrageous boundary catch in 2025. But then, all of us have also seen that clip from the 2015 BBL. He stepped down the pitch and shouldered arms at a ball that came straight on and rattled his stumps unopposed. Till date, this clip has more than 3 million views on Australia's official YouTube channel. He has called the dismissal a "low point" in his career.

Maxwell took a mental-health break from the game - and by extension, constantly being in the spotlight and scrutiny of professional sport - in October 2019, sitting out for six weeks as he recovered from what he described as the "four or five years" of constant globetrotting. He had just hit a 28-ball 62, but he said, "Who I was as a person had given way to how well I batted, to the extent that I didn't know who I was."

Mental health, unlike a tricky run chase on the pitch, has never been an equation to be solved or a battle to heroically vanquish. But Maxwell was always willing to let people peek behind the curtains. In his autobiography, he talks about a depressive episode he had while playing club cricket in the UK in 2008. "The fact that it peaked immediately after making a century should have been a sign that it had very little to do with cricket, and much more to do with a chemical imbalance," he said. "In hindsight, that should have been when I put in place the type of processes that I have now… This wasn't talked about in the game then, not in the way it is these days."

But then, if some of Maxwell's very public dreams had never come true, like a thriving Test career, his 128-ball 201* against Afghanistan at the 2023 World Cup was the zenith of his career, also played with the entire world's eyes on him.

You have surely seen the edits, often set to Bollywood music: Maxwell cramping up with both his legs straightened out on the ground, then Maxwell holding his arms aloft after securing the win. For once, no one talked of the opposition's bowlers or the significance of the occasion for a Maxwell blitz. After a career-long wait, still chewing his gum and using his powerful wrists, Maxwell had played the innings he always had always promised to: an ultimate catharsis to brand of cricket.

The double century will now surely be the image of his career, a moment of lasting greatness that supersedes any Maxwell we might have known once. But as he now shifts his full focus to the T20 franchise circuit, it is worth remembering his career was significant not only because of all his highest highs and lowest lows, or stardom in the social-media age, or embodying the hyper-modern T20 alpha. He was a significant cricketer because he also broke from the norms of the sport - he was frank about being a globe-trotting cricketer, and being in his own mind, while millions watched on.

The public eye can be cruel and pry open the privacy of the most private cricketers. But with time, Maxwell's success will surely also come down to how he used his platform. Batting in Wankhede, he might have, finally, become superhuman. But throughout his career, watching - and hearing - Maxwell was the ultimate reassurance. A reminder that in the end, it is okay to be human.