Glenn Maxwell is stepping away from cricket again to tackle mental health

Glenn Maxwell has announced that he is a indefinite mental and physical break of cricket during the IPL tournament where he played for Royal Challengers Bengaluru. The all-rounder is no stranger to being transparent about how he feels and putting aside the sport for health reasons.

If ever there was a man who lived for cricket, it was Maxwell. “It's a game I've loved since I can remember walking and having so many negative thoughts was quite alarming,” he told Cricket.com.au in March 2020. The Australian was one of the first cricketers to cite mental health issues when it was announced he would be taking time off from the game in October 2019. The day after admitting things were out of shape, he still hit 62 off 28 balls against Sri Lanka in a T20. The relief of getting it out was liberating.

Possibly, it got to a point where the mask had to slip. The banality of telling interested and distant parties that everything is fine would no longer suffice. The automatic process of putting on a front, such as putting on the Baggy Green cap as a statement of identity, did not help. Maxwell decided to hide his internal thunder until it burst.

Five years ago, The Big Show, a nickname the player is not a fan of, didn't want to be the star of the game's biggest trophy. He was shot physically and mentally. When he was injured in a net session during England's World Cup campaign, the Victorian almost hoped for a way out: When I got hit I was angry and part of me hoped [my arm] was broken. I thought, this is it, I just need a break. I thought about things I could do on the way back (from the hospital) to make it pop.

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The innovation, if you can call it that, was a success because it allowed the player to recalibrate and understand what really made them the person outside the suitcase of constant touring. He spoke to Moises Henriques, who suffered from depression, team psychologist Michael Lloyd and sports psychiatrist Ranjit Menon to discover the way back. Donning the pads for his club team was also cathartic, if somewhat terrifying as the path to rediscovering the sport's innocence began.

Undoubtedly, cricket has a history of being one of the most taxing in the world in terms of schedules. National captain Pat Cummins recently gave an interview in which he talked about the Cricket's unforgiving treadmill is 12 months a year. The fun of the game can be lost in the extended franchise season, which sits between Test series tours and World Cups.

Cricket may not be a physical contact sport, but its mental challenges, with so much waiting time, are much tougher than they seem, wrote Australian journalist Robert Craddock in one of his columns. It's true. There are so many more failures than successes in sports and the cricket nature can prolong and internalize the worries. Forwards can quickly get a shot at redemption if they miss an open goal. Batsmen don't have that chance.

It was Maxwell himself who asked to be dropped after scoring just 32 runs in six innings for RCB in the IPL so far. “I've probably been in this situation in the past where you can keep playing and push yourself deeper into a hole. I think this is a good time to give myself a mental and physical break and get my body back in order get,” he said.

Just a few months ago, Maxwell smashed an incredible double century Afghanistan in the ODI World Cup on virtually one leg. It was clear that it took a lot out of him at the time. One of his follow-up innings in the T20 series – incomprehensibly scheduled immediately after Australia's World Cup win against defeated finalists India – was equally entertaining.

Now it's time to turn off the remote control. Those staggering sixes can never be taken for granted. Last time, the Big Bash got Maxwell going again. Perhaps the T20 carnival in the Caribbean and the United States will see him back for some rum fun.