Reverting back to old faces and hands has not done the trick for the Chennai Super Kings. But there is another team that is struggling to make it count when it comes to one of their prime players and it might be costly for them in the end.
The Kings XI Punjab will be scratching their head that they paid nearly 11 crore rupees for a player who is yet to shine with bat or ball. Glenn Maxwell’s lack of success has become a talking point as well as the fact that the team has continued to persist with him in the playing eleven for the longest time hoping he would come good eventually even as the clamour to drop him for another player was resisted for a fair part of the tournament.
Maxwell himself has come out and stated that he feels that the lack of consistency when it comes to his performance, particularly in this IPL 2020 season, is because he is trying to get acclimatized to his batting position of no.5. For a player who has been around for the Kings XI Punjab team for a total of five seasons thus far, it is rather baffling that the batting order is solely responsible for the player being unable to translate talent into performance.
After all, Maxwell lit the stage on fire, also in the UAE, in 2014 when playing for this team. Thereafter he went onto captain the team before he was released briefly. Now after a one-year hiatus, Maxwell has returned to the IPL with soaring expectations. But thus far, he has not really shown up for the Kings XI Punjab in any real sense to justify his steep purchase.
Questions will be asked of the ability of the Kings XI Punjab to buy quality players and use them well. If the player is not finding his feet in a changing position, it speaks to the character of some players who are quite rigid about this batting places in a team but also, to the team, which after five seasons, should know how to be able to communicate with the player and also, find a way to be able to extract the best out of him. Failing to do so might be the team’s fault as much as it is the player’s responsibility to adapt. The gap is evident in how the team is working around him, keeping him around without any problem-solving at hand with the hope that it might click automatically. It has not worked that way for the team for the greater part of the tournament.
Maxwell, unfortunately, is in a position to become the sore point of the Kings XI Punjab this season and could become the reason should they miss the IPL playoff boat in 2020.