Glenn Maxwell scripted history on Wednesday at Arun Jaitley Stadium by recording the fastest century in ODI World Cup history. Maxwell slammed the Dutch bowlers all-round the park to make sure the 18,000-plus fans at the Arun Jaitley International Stadium enjoyed something extraordinary that they will remember for the rest of their lives. It was indeed a ‘Big Show’ from Maxwell as he smacked a 40-ball century to light up the stadium.
During his 106-run knock, Maxwell hit nine fours and eight sixes helping Australia post a mammoth 399/8 and they went on to win the match by 309 runs. With the Netherlands being the story of the World Cup 2023 so far, it was widely expected that the Dutch may not go down without a fight, but Wednesday they were hit by the Maxwell freight train and never recovered.
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Maxwell came out to bat in the 40th over of the innings and didn’t take much time to get into his groove. He completed his half-century in 27 balls. However, that was just a trailer as he ransacked his next 50 runs off just 13 deliveries.
Maxwell was asked whether he was thinking about getting to a century when he was on 75 and only two overs were left, he replied to News18 CricketNext’s query in the press conference and said the plan was to control the last five overs as the landmark was not on his mind.
“It wasn’t really on my mind. I was going to try and farm the strike for the back end. I think it was about five overs to go and I told Pat that I was going to try and control the last five overs as much as I possibly could. If I got it on a run, I thought there was no point in taking singles because it might just be a single back and forth where I could get a bunch of balls in a row and hopefully find some hitting,” Maxwell said in the post-match press conference.
The 35-year-old reached the triple-figure mark with a maximum over square leg on a delivery which was a waist-height no-ball. He smashed 28 runs in Bas de Leede’s penultimate over – 4, 4, 6, 6, 6nb, 1, 0.
Meanwhile, it was his first 50-plus score in the last 16 innings and it got entry into the history books.
Talking further about his knock, Maxwell opened up on his mindset while attacking the Dutch bowlers who also gifted him a couple of full tosses which went for sixes.
“I think on a ground like that if you can put pressure on a certain bowler or anyone and get a hold of them a couple of times in a row, you can produce mistakes, you can produce errors. I felt like that was what I did in the 49th over. I was able to put pressure on his good balls and then got bad balls, where I could actually hit for sixes. So, I suppose that was just my tactics at the back end. I was lucky enough to get a couple of full tosses at the back end, which highlighted, I suppose, there was a pretty good chance I was going to get 100,” he added.
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