Glenn Maxwell's reverse sweeps make fielding captains run out of fielders
Glenn Maxwell hits cricket balls where fielders are not supposed to need to stand. Reverse sweeps, switch-hit pulls and improvised flicks mean captains struggle to cover every scoring zone. At the 2023 World Cup that style produced a 40-ball century, the tournament's fastest, and weeks later a double century that many rank among the greatest one-day innings ever played.
Born on 14 October 1988 in Kew, Victoria, Maxwell started as a medium-pace bowler with South Belgrave before switching to off-spin as a youngster. National attention arrived in February 2011, when he hammered 51 from 19 balls against Tasmania, a quicker fifty than anyone had managed before in Australia's domestic limited-overs competition. He scored his first first-class hundred the following month and made a maiden double century, 278 against New South Wales, in November 2017.
The fast fifty earned a call-up. His one-day international debut came against Afghanistan in 2012, ahead of a series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates; selector John Inverarity called him a lively off-spinning all-rounder and brilliant fielder. A T20 debut followed a month later, and a Test debut against India the next year. As of 2026 he had played 7 Tests, 149 one-day internationals and 130 T20 internationals, the last figure an Australian high.
He is the second Australian to reach three figures in all three international formats, completing the set with 104 against India in 2017, and he shares the world benchmark of five T20 international hundreds with Rohit Sharma. The Netherlands century at the 2023 World Cup was the fourth quickest in all one-day internationals; against Afghanistan a month later came the fastest double hundred ever made at a World Cup. He was in the Australian squads that won the 2015 and 2023 World Cups and the 2021 T20 World Cup.
Franchise cricket has made him a global figure. Mumbai Indians paid 1 million US dollars for him at the 2013 IPL auction, the costliest buy that year, and in the Big Bash League his 154 not out for the Melbourne Stars in 2021 and 2022 set the competition's highest individual score.
Source: Glenn Maxwell
