The Great Gig in the Sky

..on some days

Rarely does a zero make you grin.

I’m at a Japanese restaurant in Indiranagar - one of those places where mocktails arrive in pop colours and taste like melted popsicles, where Chopin and Bach are passed through LoFi filters to complement dim lights and sparse seating. Across the floor, an imitation bonsai plant spreads across a wall, backlit by IKEA lamps.

Outside the window, the traffic is building up. Bangalore is ready for the evening and its music. Inside, on giant TV screens, the Punjab Kings are dismantling the Gujarat Titans, their batters moving with the casual brutality that has become staple in T20 cricket. Shreyas Iyer is making a mockery out of pedigreed international bowlers. After a while, the Gujarat Titans land a couple of blows, which brings Glen Maxwell to the crease. First knock of the season, team set up beautifully, time for a blitz.

Then: first ball, reverse-sweep, miss, LBW, gone. Zero off one ball. Maxwell is walking before the umpire’s finger has completed its ascent. A wave of laughter sweeps through the restaurant. I am sure I heard someone say, “This Maxwell fellow…tch, waste.”

For thirteen seasons, Maxwell has been cricket’s most inevitable gamble, a lottery ticket that teams can’t resist buying. Franchise owners shower him with money as if wealth itself might stabilise his genius, captains feel compelled to play him - how do you bench a man who might, on any given day, score 120 from 40 balls? At least, that’s the hope. Out of these thirteen seasons, he’s delivered perhaps two worth writing about, maybe two and a half if you’re feeling charitable. Yet, people keep coming back for more.

The IPL suffers from a curious anxiety.

T20 cricket fundamentally recalibrates risk. In a format compressed to just 120 legitimate deliveries, aggression becomes necessity rather than luxury. It should, thus, celebrate the volatile, embrace chaos. But that’s an easy philosophy to throw when you’re in it for an evening of martinis and barbecue and vintage Deep Purple.

The IPL is currently valued at $16 billion, with a per-match value that currently beats the NBA and English Premier League. The broadcasting rights were recently sold for $6.2 billion. Every franchise comes with a purse of Rs. 120 crore per year for player salary alone.

The weight of these numbers creates a massive pressure on the ecosystem around it. Players can’t control what price they are signed for, but they have to bear its weight. A highly-paid player gets reminded of his wages everywhere he goes, from press conferences to casual social media interaction. It’s such an odd situation, where the value of your talent can sometimes become an albatross around your neck.

And then there is the downward pressure from the top of the pyramid. The owners of these franchises - media moguls, industrial patriarchs, Bollywood royalty - aren’t content with anonymity. They want to play protagonists in this Bollywood movie, so they sit in places where the camera can easily reach. The broadcast feed cuts to them after every boundary or wicket, their faces emitting joy and despair with soap-opera intensity. They give press conferences, issue statements on social media, and sometimes stroll onto the field itself.

Last year, after the Sunrisers Hyderabad had pounded the Lucknow Super Giants into a plate of haleem, LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka stormed into the dugout and publicly berated captain KL Rahul. Part-owner, part-man who has just found scratches on his new Bentley.¹

In this environment, the appetite for risk naturally diminishes. Playing a batter who will consistently give you ~35 runs becomes easier to justify than selecting a firecracker who might score three ducks in a row; follow it up with some quick 20s; but, on the odd day, when the stars align, play a blinder and win you the game from nowhere. Besides, an IPL team is allowed to play at most four foreign players in a game, so there isn’t a lot of logic behind betting on erratic firecrackers.

Consider the IPL’s most successful franchises: Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. Built on reliability and consistency more than explosive potential. From day one, CSK have prioritised players who punch above their weight regardless of their technical ceiling. Look at the first squad they assembled, then look at their most recent one, and you’ll find a thread of consistency. Mumbai Indians went the Real Madrid way, assembling a galaxy of elite T20 talent, at one point fielding a lineup straight out of cricket’s wet dreams - Rohit Sharma, Quinton de Kock, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Keiron Pollard, Jasprit Bumrah, and Trent Boult. If one doesn’t get you, the other will.

I find it very funny that two of Maxwell’s best friends in the sport are Virat Kohli and Pat Cummins. All-time greats, ceiling-raisers in every team, but also ridiculously consistent. They are the models for today’s game, players who will play tight cricket and know precisely the right moment to uncage their more aggressive instincts.

At the 2024 T20 World Cup final, Kohli trudged through a phase of 35 deliveries without hitting a boundary - stuff of nightmares for Maxwell - knowing that his dismissal might sink India’s hopes entirely. He switched on as the innings entered its final phase, dispatching Marco Jansen and Kagiso Rabada for sixes to carry India to a total they could bowl at. In the ODI World Cup final the previous year, Pat Cummins didn’t bowl the piercing in-dippers or teeth-hunting bouncers we’re accustomed to seeing from him in Test cricket. He bowled slow and into the body, giving neither pace nor space to the Indian batters. That was the recipe for the day, and Cummins executed with mechanical perfection.

They wrote forewords in Glen Maxwell’s autobiography, these two men. And I think that says so much. As captains, they have extended the longest professional ropes to Maxwell, even as he couldn’t guarantee any stability, even as he represents everything about risk-appetite that they themselves avoid. Perhaps they see in him something they secretly wish they had: the freedom to fail spectacularly in pursuit of something glorious.

Natural habitat. Picture courtesy: YouTube

What does it mean to be a maverick in modern sports? Not just someone who’s good in an unconventional way, but someone whose entire attitude challenges conventions? Maxwell approaches cricket as if he knows laws others don’t. In a system increasingly designed to eliminate variables, he insists on staying stubbornly, consistently variable.

His mid-twenties T20 batting average places him alongside forgettable journeymen, statistical footnotes. But his strike rate of 154 places him among the elite, those ahead of their time. This is the Maxwell paradox: statistically ordinary until he isn’t, invisible until he’s spectacular.

His two big IPL seasons reveal what happens when he comes good. In 2014, he accumulated 552 runs at a strike rate of 187.75, playing shots that seemed borrowed from another sport, perhaps some played in zero gravity. Punjab Kings - then named Kings XI Punjab - reached the IPL final. In 2021, he compiled 513 runs for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, striking at relatively-sedate 144.10, showing that his particular brand of anarchy could find structure once in a while. RCB reached the playoffs.

Between these sharp peaks lie deep, endless valleys - seasons where an impostor with his name and similar physical features took his place.

Every time I watch Maxwell, I’m reminded of Shahid Afridi, the patron saint of cricketing chaos. That magnificent madman approached each delivery as an opportunity for glory, swinging at everything with such ferocity that his bat and the ball could occasionally end up in different postcodes. His ODI average of 23.57 tells you nothing about how heart rates accelerated when he walked to the crease; how fielding captains suddenly looked like men who’d forgotten where they parked their cars; how, even as he approached retirement, teams wanted him in their dugout like a good luck charm.

It’s a powerful halo to possess. Maxwell was the most expensive player in the IPL in 2013 (purchased by Mumbai Indians for Rs. 5.3 crore), and commanded premium prices even in 2021, well into a performance trough but still carrying an aura powerful enough to open wallets. He will happily admit that this aura has contributed more to his bank account than actual scorecards and post-season aggregates.

To compound this situation, Maxwell’s most recent IPL seasons have been played in the colours of Punjab Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore. Teams without a single men’s IPL trophy between them, with RCB the eternal bridesmaids in cricket’s destination wedding. These are franchises desperate for transformation, yet still willing to roll the dice on cricket’s ultimate high-variance player. On most days, they appear foolish, but I find it strangely beautiful, a rare victory for vibes over logic.

Something essential in sport exists beyond the realm of optimisation. On most days, the best teams win and the best players do well. Sure. But, not always. There will be days when a raw, young bowler from Rawalpindi will make Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar look slow; another when a boy from rural Guyana will make seasoned Australian players duck and weave like beginners in a boxing gym. Those moments are magic, and magic often happens when someone is willing to push at ceilings to see what gives.

The pipe organ dates back to Greece in the 3rd century BC. For centuries, it was used for church and gospel music. Later, it got adopted into blues and jazz as the world began looking at music as a recreation. Then, one day, the son of a church organist thought that the guitarists in his band were having too much fun. He found a guitar amplifier lying around, and voila.

“I wanted to make the Hammond (organ) sound as dirty as a guitar. I plugged it straight into a Marshall stack with no Leslie cabinet in between. It was raw, powerful, and perfect for rock music.”

That’s Jon Lord, keyboardist and architect of the texture that defined Deep Purple’s sound.

Without people willing to risk looking foolish, art would optimise within existing parameters rather than expanding them. This is precisely the space where Glen Maxwell exists. It would be excessive to suggest he’s an artist on a lifelong quest to discover new colours, but he clearly has no interest in the conventional grammar of his craft. He isn’t made for the protein shake-predictability of modern athletic life; he wants the red chilli paste-coated Korean fried chicken, occasionally thrice-a-day.

Cricket’s continued investment in Maxwell - even as his beard grows patchier and his spikes less sharp - suggests an intuitive understanding that sport needs its mavericks. It needs players who want to play the high-wire acts. Because, on the right day, they might produce something that recalibrates our understanding of what’s possible. Someday, when everything around them fails and their team stares at World Cup elimination and cramps take over their entire body and turn one leg into a stiff log of wood, they will score 201 unbeaten runs under the humid air of Mumbai.

His innings against Gujarat Titans was pure, unadulterated Glen Maxwell. Strategically, it meant little - Punjab had batting depth and a good score to launch from. The outcome was suboptimal but not catastrophic. But, it was still a wicket lost, an important batting position wasted. Amidst the collective derision around me, I couldn’t help but grin. Not at his failure, not at the reaction, but at his refusal to compromise.

“On the line between crazy and genius, I know which side he falls on.” - Pat Cummins on Glen Maxwell

1. These days, Goenka is currently on an image rehabilitation tour that would impress a politician. On evening, he is giving post-match speeches in a dressing room that already has Justin Langer, Zaheer Khan, and Lance Klusener. On the next, he dives into the brainrot Twitter trend of filtering boring photos through Studio Ghibli’s otherworldly aesthetic.