In 2014, both Sehwag and Maxwell played a crucial role in Punjab’s run to the IPL final. (Sportzpics/BCCI)
In 2014, when Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) reached its only IPL final to this day, Glenn Maxwell and Virender Sehwag were crucial pillars to their success. Maxwell – 25 then – was the player of the tournament and finished with 552 runs under his belt. Sehwag on the other hand had scored a big hundred in the 2nd Qualifier to help Punjab inch past Chennai for a place in the final.
While Sehwag played his last IPL game the following season, calling it quits from professional cricket, his paths with Maxwell crossed again when he became Punjab’s mentor. It wasn’t the reunion the Australian had hoped for. In his new book, Glenn Maxwell The Showman, the Australian looks back at his time with Punjab and how his relationship with the former Indian opener soured. To the point where Maxwell texted Sehwag that he had lost a fan, to which the latter responded, “Don’t need fan like you.”
Going into the 2017 season, Maxwell was appointed as the captain of the franchise, a message that was conveyed to him from Sehwag during Australia’s tour of India the same year.
“We discussed how the team would operate, and I thought we were all on the same page. How wrong I was,” Maxwell writes in his book. “Our coach, J Arunkumar, was coming in for his first season, and it became clear to him that he was coach in name only, with Sehwag pulling the strings.”
He adds, “When it came to selection, I thought it might be a good idea to bring the coaches into a WhatsApp group to make our decisions. Everyone agreed to this and shared their teams, with the exception of Sehwag. At the end of the process, he made it clear that he would pick the starting XI, end of story.”
The Australian goes on to add how this affected the franchise in a season where they finished fifth in the eight-team points table – narrowly missing out on the playoffs.
“Take poor old Ishant Sharma. At one point he was told not to bother coming to our game that day in Mumbai, having not been picked in a while. We had several other local bowlers, plus the Kiwi quick Matt Henry had just come into the side. Doing the right thing, Ishant did a gym session and came along anyway, bowling at full pace in the warm-up. Then Eoin Morgan was told that he would be a new inclusion that day, taking the last overseas player spot from Matt. Morgs protested that it wasn’t fair to drop Matt after only playing one game, so they rejigged again, left out Morgs, and both Henry and Ishant played.”
The tensions between the captain and the mentor reached a boiling point at the end of the season, when Maxwell volunteered to do the press conference after Punjab were rolled over by Rising Pune Supergiant for 73 in their last game. Instead, Sehwag took to the presser and unloaded on the captain as the ‘big disappointment’ of the season.
“I texted him to say how much it hurt to read those comments and added that he had lost a fan in me for the way he had conducted himself. Sehwag’s response was simple: “Don’t need fan like you.” We never spoke again,” Maxwell says. “I knew my time was at an end and told the owners as much: if Sehwag was going to stick around, they were making a mistake and not to bother with me. He only lasted one more season.”
Maxwell, who joined Delhi Capitals for the subsequent season before returned back to Punjab, played his last game for the 2014 finalists in 2020 before being signed by RCB in 2021. His final season with Punjab saw Maxwell amass a mere 108 runs in 13 matches – a lackluster display which led to Sehwag quoting him as a ’10-crore cheerleader’ in a video on his Facebook page. “He has had a bad record of scoring runs over the past few seasons. But this campaign, he went to new extremes. This is what you call a highly-paid vacation,” Sehwag would say.
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