Royal Challengers Bangalore all-rounder Glenn Maxwell revealed the idea was to be ultra positive when he went to bat against Gujarat Titans at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Thursday.
Maxwell joined forces with a well-settled Virat Kohli at 115-1 after the dismissal of captain Faf du Plessis when the asking rate started to climb in the run-chase of 169 runs.
Maxwell had the rub of the green on his side as the Rashid Khan’s wrong-one clipped the leg-stump but the bail was adamant to come off. The Australian took on the attack against the GT bowlers and went on to score a quickfire knock of 40 runs off just 18 balls to help his team win convincingly by eight wickets.
The hard-hitter scored five fours and two sixes in his blistering knock as he scored his runs at a splendid strike rate of 222.22.
Furthermore, Maxwell also contributed with the ball as he dismissed Matthew Wade and conceded 28 runs in his quota of four overs. Moreover, he took a fine catch at slip to dismiss Shubman Gill.
Glenn Maxwell said after the game, “I didn’t want to soak up any time. If I can get the first couple away, try and put some pressure on them, take pressure off Virat at the other end, we keep the momentum going. I could have gotten out first ball, wouldn’t have mattered, but if I had soaked up a few dots, it would have given them some momentum back. Tried to be ultra-positive. We dominated with the bat in that innings. (His first ball – the bails didn’t fall) When I missed it, I thought that’s going to be pretty close. The worst thing is picking the wrong ‘un and missing it and thinking it’s going to hit the stumps. You need a bit of luck, in this tournament, it’s been up and down. At least the bails stayed on for me.”
He added, “(On the catch at first slip) In my mind, I was moving a little bit too slow. Hit perfectly in the fingers and stuck nicely. I practise that sort of stuff, I have practised my whole life, it’s not something that’s just out of the blue. It’s something I work really hard on. Gave us the right start and we were able to control the powerplay after that. (On his bowling) Spin – loose term – straight breaks, right-arm slow bowling (*chuckles*). It was just about holding my lengths. Sai bowled beautifully there. There was some hold for finger spin. Just tried to make most of anything out of the surface. We’ll be watching the Mumbai-Delhi game pretty closely. The guys will stay really focused. The amount of hard work and effort that has gone into this team this year, we feel like we deserve to be in that final four. Hopefully Mumbai can do the right thing and get us to Kolkata.”
Maxwell played a crucial hand in RCB’s eight-wicket win over Gujarat Titans as he delivered in all the three departments of the game. The Australian has scored 268 runs in 11 matches of Tata IPL 2022 at an average of 29.78 and a whirlwind strike rate of 172.90.
RCB will need MI to beat DC in the penultimate league stage match of the season in order to make it to the playoff stages.
