Things are on course to go from bad to worse for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru after their Australian big hitter Glenn Maxwell picked up a vicious Thumb injury last night at the Wankhede stadium. Maxwell had blown up his thumb while fielding against the Mumbai Indians in their 6th IPL 2024 league stage match where the home team defeated the visitors in a one-sided affair by 7-wickets. And due to his thumb injury setback, Maxwell is in line to miss RCB’s next game.
It has indeed been a tough start to the 2024 season so far for Glenn Maxwell, who is considered a key batter for RCB in the top-middle order. His reputation of being a power hitter has not been able to take the center stage yet and his latest injury setback will cause more tension in the Bengaluru dressing room. Until now, only Virat Kohli has looked like the batter who is in form and is scoring runs in a consistent manner.
Last night was the first time in IPL 2024 that Kohli was not able to score a single boundary and got out without reaching double figures. The 35-year-old was sent packing by none other than Mumbai Indians’ frontline pacer Jasprit Bumrah for 3 runs. But RCB were lucky enough that skipper Faf du Plessis stuck on and Rajat Patidar, too, was able to get over his lean patch which had seen him score 50 runs combined from first the 4 matches that he batted in.
Why is Glenn Maxwell not able to bring on his A game?
For a fact, Glenn Maxwell has looked in some kind of rush in this IPL 2024 season. The Big Show has also looked highly impatient with the bat and without trying to settle in, the Aussie has rather looked to thrash every ball that comes his way. Against the Chennai Super Kings (0)in the season opener, Maxwell made a poor shot selection as he gave a routine catch to MS Dhoni by just nicking a delivery from Deepak Chahar.
Against the Punjab Kings (3), Glenn Maxwell got out against fingerspinner Harpreet Brar while trying to make room for himself to cut away the ball on the off-side but he instead dragged it on to the stumps. Maxwell was beaten and taken aback by the pace in his 3rd match against Lucknow Super Giants as he tried to pull away a short-pitched delivery from express pacer Mayank Yadav for his second duck of the season.
Then against the Rajasthan Royals, Maxwell made the mistake as he did against Punjab by trying to make room instead of just seeing off a hard length delivery by Nandre Burger. Maxwell’s feet were wide apart as he had tried to play the ball towards mid-wicket but the ball instead came rattling the stumps. And last night against MI, the Big Show, again failed to judge the movement of the delivery bowler by leg-spinner Shreyas Gopal.
The leggie got rid of him quite easily with a tight lengthed googly which went straight into the pads while Glenn Maxwell was just trying to flick it for a single. So basically, all that is hindering him from reach his full potential is his predictability, shot selection and of course lack of patience. Whether he’ll be fine from the Thumb injury or not? Time will tell.
