Speaking on ESPN’s Around the Wicket, Maxwell said he had paid close attention to Mayank while watching LSG’s previous game against Punjab Kings but nothing could prepare him for the real thing.
“I thought it was really impressive,” Maxwell said. “He hurried on a few of the Punjab batters and I certainly did a little bit of homework before coming up against him. But it’s nothing doing homework against someone until you actually see it coming out of the hand and have to try and pick up the length.
“He bowled me the first one which was just a high bouncer and the wicket that we’ve been producing at [Bengaluru] has been a little bit two-paced and it sort of came through a bit slower than I thought it was going to. And I was like, ah, that wasn’t too bad.
“And then the next one was hard length and skidded on probably faster than I thought it was going to be and as you saw I went to pull thinking that I picked up the length really well and before you know it, it’s on you, hitting the shoulder the bat and ballooning up in the air.
“He has some real extra speed that you don’t really see a lot of around world cricket at the moment. You see guys bowl pretty consistently around the 140s [kph] or high 140s. But to have mid-150s consistently in your arsenal is pretty formidable.”
Maxwell said that the closest comparison he could draw in terms of pace was to Tait, who he faced in Australian domestic cricket in the second half of his career.
“It’s such a beautiful smooth action,” Maxwell said. “He [Mayank] sort of glided through the crease really nicely. I think pace-wise, the only one that I can sort of really resemble it to is a little bit like Shaun Tait when he was in his heyday.
“I think when he was at the peak of his powers it was extremely hard to pick up the extra zip it feels like it has off the wicket. I think that’s as close as it probably comes to it.”
Maxwell admitted that he and RCB had not started well after losing three of their first four games. Maxwell has bowled impressively but has scores of 0, 3, 28 and 0. He said that RCB’s overseas batters in particularly were having trouble adjusting to some unexpected surfaces in Bengaluru in particular.
“It obviously hasn’t been a great start for us or myself individually,” Maxwell said. “It’s been a little bit of a struggle. I think we’ve been probably caught a little bit behind with our conditions that we’ve probably produced in the first few home games as well.
“I think last year we had a beautiful even wicket that we were able to I suppose get ourselves into the game, get our top batters going and I’ve felt that those two-paced wickets it’s just been a bit of a struggle for our overseas players to get into the game and get that sort of consistency of performance. And when you start slow in T20 cricket it can be a hard thing to come back and find rhythm to get back into it. So hopefully this little away trip does us some good.”
