While in primary school, Glen Maxwell Once did not go out for a week and his angry classmates complained to the PT master.
For a week or two, Maxwell switched to basketball, but the game of hoops didn’t excite him as much and he went back to cricket.
He was allowed to play on one condition – he should bat left-handed. “So I developed good left-handed shots. Then I went home and practiced a lot with my left hand as well. My dad always inspired me to try new things,” he explains in a video. Soon, he was so good at batting with the left hand that his teammates asked him to bat with the right hand. Then he started switching hitting and reverse sweeps as he does now.
Recently, the game has seen an increase in the number of ‘reverse and switch hitters’. But no one draws those strokes with the ingenuity of Maxwell. No one had made them so natural, or added more reverse variants to the repertoire. any cricket shot that a batsman can traditionally play; Maxwell can build the opposite version. From reverse sweep to reverse pull, from reverse scoop to reverse cover drive (which he flaunts in the nets).
He also improves his methods depending on the shot he wants to reverse. But he starts with his back foot back, as if to clear mud off spikes. The front foot then opens up and makes a large diagonal stride to cover the line of the ball, with the toe facing the bowlers, and then flips the direction of the bat-swing by extending the back-arm. . He also changes his grip, wrapping his lower arm over the handle, to bring the bat to a flat-line with the pad, and to turn semi-horizontally. “I do this because I don’t want to twist my wrists around the ball so that I can get a good full swing and offer the full face of the bat,” he elaborates.
The degree of bat-swing varies according to the shot. For the reverse lap, which he does mostly against pacers chasing full-lengths, the bat-swing is minimal, and the front-foot doesn’t come out as much. But when the reverse sweep is done, the bat-swing is more pronounced to get the required power. Depending on whether he wants to hit the ball on the ground or in the air, his body does the opposite. “If I want to go over the fielders, I lean back and move the body away. But if I want to play it with the ground, I lean forward and head over to the ball,” he explains.
A variety of technical and natural skills fuel the shots. Good eyes that detect length, sharp hands that enable changes in grip, reflexes and muscle memory to complement the change of direction but at the same time maintain balance. But the mind also plays a part, as it requires complete self-confidence to pull off that shot. The line between being inventive and carefree is rarely so thin. Maxwell himself was pulled up several times in his international career for making a reverse-stroke. Maxwell claims that nothing can beat practice.
But try telling him to avoid or limit the shot, he’ll shoot back: “To me, it’s no different than a cover drive. It’s my percentage shot.” There will be testimony of many useless bowlers in this IPL. On slow, low tracks, where the ball stuttered before reaching the batsman, he ambushed them with his reverse-stroking sorcery. This could be a recurring topic in World T20 as well and how to stop it will be a matter of concern for the captains and bowlers. There’s not much he can do but pray he somehow misses a shot or mistakes a fielder.
As a disruptive weapon, the reverse variants are almost unique. They not only break the pace of the bowlers and make fun of the setting of the field, but also change the mood and pace of the match. And Maxwell is the sultan of reverse hits.
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