Glenn Maxwell’s mental health battle shines light on cricket’s dark reality
You only have to look at Glenn Maxwell’s obscene amount of time on the road to understand part of the reason for his mental health battle, with the issue again highlighting one of the game’s greatest difficulties.
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Glenn Maxwell woke up at 3am last Monday in a Perth hotel and reached for his phone to check Twitter.
Shane Warne had just drafted the brilliant match-winner to London Spirit in The Hundred, blacking out six weeks of Maxwell’s already-jammed 2020 calendar, albeit with a $235,000 cheque coming his way.
That day Maxwell padded up and made 57 in Victoria’s Sheffield Shield loss to Western Australia.
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Two days later he was bowled for one in a day-nighter against Western Australia.
Three days later he flew from Perth to Adelaide to join Australia’s T20 squad.
By then Australian coach Justin Langer could tell Maxwell, 31, wasn’t right. The alpha-male and joyous thrasher was struggling, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
Maxwell had just gone more than 200 nights without sleeping in his own bed, between February and September, and suddenly the Australian summer was here.
Not the home summer, the Australian summer.
“It just means you’re playing in front of an Australian audience,” one former Test player said on Friday.
“You’re not travelling the world, but you’re still travelling.
“Even if you’re having a home series, you might be playing in Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and for Maxi, that’s not home. It’s a really unique issue to cricket.”
But it’s not even shared by English cricketers, who drive from city to city, play a game and then drive home all in the one day. No suitcases or airports.
The only benefits of an “Australian summer” are familiar surrounds and friendlier time zones to message family and friends.
Take Ben McDermott for example, who replaced Maxwell at the MCG on Friday night.
Australia is in the midst of playing six T20s in six different cities in less than two weeks — but none of them are in McDermott’s hometown in Tasmania.
Most of this squad has run from city to city more than they have between the wickets.
In fact, Langer has only scheduled a few training sessions in this series, because the itinerary is stacked with travel days and games.
It was courageous of Maxwell to step away from the game on Thursday because of his mental health battle and you wonder how many other players have thought about it.
Tours abroad throw up even more complexities for the Australian camp.
“You’ve got to treat them as people and recognise there’s some extroverts, there’s some introverts, there’s some people who are single, some have families, some whose wives are going to have babies,” Langer said from England this year.
Players have their releases. Plenty, including Maxwell, reach for the golf clubs on a day off. Usman Khawaja likes to go shopping.
But it’s not easy.
“The players make a lot of sacrifices,” Langer said.
“They sacrifice being home a lot, they sacrifice a normal routine lifestyle, they sacrifice a lot of time with their families.”
In 2014, Nathan Lyon watched the birth of his second daughter, Milla, on Skype, during the final day of a Test match in the UAE.
Back in 1997 there was no Skype, and so Shane Warne missed the birth of his daughter, but flew home after an Ashes Test to meet baby Brooke.
But Warne spent almost as much time in the air as he did with the family, quickly jetting back to England for the next Test.
This year David Warner’s daughter had her birthday chosen by Cricket Australia to fit around Australia’s World Cup schedule.
Wife Candice was induced in London during the longest break between games and baby Isla spent her first few months on Earth living in a Paddington apartment as Warner played the Ashes.
Warner told friends before his ban that he would spend just 20 nights in his own bed each year.
The workload balance looms as a bubbling global cricket issue that’s about to froth as more leagues pop up around the international schedule.
But different players are also facing different battles.
Young Victorian star Will Pucovski is training his brain with mindfulness coach Emma Murray to deal with ongoing mental health challenges.
Pucovski, 21, undoes his gloves at the non-striker’s end to relax and then wiggles his toes as he enters his batting stance to trigger his mind back into action.
Cricket turned to torture for Moises Henriques, who has also taken time away from the game.
Henriques struggled to sleep during Sheffield Shield games as his love for the sport faded during a dark patch.
But Steve Smith almost proudly keeps his eyes open all night, adamant it’s because he’s just itching to get to the crease the next day.
“Some of my best innings have come when I’ve had literally no sleep,” Smith said on Wednesday.
But even the workaholic former captain can get weary.
“As a one-day player I struggled to understand how Smith and Warner and these guys would come into a one-day series after five Tests flat,” Aaron Finch said last month.
“I’d be like, ‘Smudge you’re in the form of your life, you’re peeling off hundreds, how are you flat?’
“He was like, ‘I’m just cooked’.”
If that’s Smith, who is used to peeling off Test tons, how would a player like Maxwell be feeling?
Maxwell spent the World Cup shuffling up and down Australia’s batting order and then all over England with Lancashire, without his usual support network on hand.
Throw in some indifferent form, tough love from the Test selectors and a hospital visit after being struck in the nets by Mitchell Starc and it’s hard not to sympathise with him.
Starc recently deleted Twitter and on Friday former teammate John Hastings revealed he once told Maxwell to do the same, given he absorbs plenty of unwanted feedback.
“I know the argument, ‘Well they get paid’ but you’ve still got to treat them as human beings,” Langer said.
“I’d say this. I would not change my life for anything — but it’s not as glamorous as it looks.”
Originally published as Glenn Maxwell’s mental health battle shines light on cricket’s dark reality