Afghanistan were cruising to victory until batter’s astonishing double hundred sparks bewildering and exhausting run chase
Sometimes, in any sport, all you can do is sit and look and ask: what the hell just happened? Sometimes, it defies any conventional understanding. Glenn Maxwell has produced more moments like this than most. This one, though, in Mumbai on Tuesday night, was the apogee. More than a moment, a string of them. An extended sequence of impossibility, one after the other spiralling off into the floodlights and the smog and the endless jubilant roar, sweat and bewilderment and metallic adrenaline in an impressionist smear.
For decades, nobody made double hundreds in one-day cricket. Belinda Clark took one off the might of Denmark, the anomaly that proved the rule. Sachin Tendulkar got the first in the men’s game, creeping to the mark in 2010. Nine others have done it since, but all in the first innings, beating up a team from well on top. They were brilliant exhibitions without the pressure. Nobody had ever done it in a run chase, from miles behind, needing to win a game on their own.
Written by Geoff Lemon in Mumbai
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/nov/07/glenn-maxwell-australia-cricket-world-cup-afghanistan under the title “Maxwell’s sequence of impossibility beggars belief to rescue Australia”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
