Australian team physio Nick Jones revealed the key advice he had for Glenn Maxwell after the superstar told him he was “done” having suffered a painful full body cramp.
In the 41st over and on 146 runs, Maxwell flicked a shot down to mid-off but struggled to make his way down the wicket for a single and immediately fell down to the ground and writhed in agony.
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Jones raced onto the field to help Maxwell, who looked like a “grounded whiting” according to former Australian skipper and commentator Aaron Finch.
“It’s almost a full body cramp he’s gone into,” Finch said.
“It’s like someone put a shock of lightning through him, like a grounded whiting. Unbelievable.”
With his body going into shutdown mode, Maxwell felt he had absolutely nothing left to give and Pat Cummins, who was out there with him in the middle, tried to convince his batting partner to have a brief spell off the field.
But Jones knew that would be the worst thing possible.
“While we were giving him (Maxwell) a bit of a stretch out, it was in that moment he said, ‘I’m done here. I can’t keep going. I need to come off and retire,’” Jones told cricket.com.au.
“Patty was like, ‘Go off, get some treatment and you can always come back later.
“That is reasonable in some situations. But in that one, from my end, if you take someone off in that situation when their system is already depleted, and you sit them down and cool them down – you’re not getting them back up.
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“Their body shuts down. They often go into full body cramps and you’re often not able to get any level of function out of them.”
Knowing that Maxwell was in bruising form with the bat and that he wouldn’t return if he went off the field, Jones knew what needed to be done.
First, he had to get Maxwell up off the ground because the longer he lay down, “other things are going to cramp” and would have made things more painful than they already were.
But he also told the men in the middle how they had to play for the rest of the game if both were to stay out on the field and chase down the 56 runs that were required at the time.
Jones believed the “best bet” for Maxwell was to simply “minimise your running” and “stay on your feet.”
Jones said he was also trying to keep Maxwell “calm” and manage his heart rate by being as “assuring as possible”.
“(Jones said to Maxwell) ‘We’ve seen this before, we know what this looks like – I think you’re going to be able to do this. If we can keep you as upright as possible, you’re going to be able to keep going from now’.”
Jones’ advice evidently worked a charm, as Maxwell remained at the crease and blasted boundary after boundary en route to a heroic unbeaten knock of 201.
Although Maxwell rightly earned all of the plaudits, Australian cricket fans have a lot to thank Jones for.