Australian superstar Glenn Maxwell has opened up on his shock decision to take an indefinite break from cricket to deal with his mental and physical health.
The 35-year-old has played for Australia since 2012, helping them to win the Cricket World Cup in November. He is currently playing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the Indian Premier League, though has scored just 32 runs in his first six games.
The Challengers are bottom of the table with just points following Monday's 25-run defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad. Maxwell was not part of the squad for that loss, with the all-rounder now revealing he had requested to be left out.
The star has confirmed that he will be taking an indefinite break as he looks to rediscover his form for the T20 World Cup in June. Maxwell is confident that a break will serve him well, even as his decision surprised his team-mates at RCB.
"I don't think I've had a better six months in cricket leading into this tournament, so it's frustrating when it ends up like this. Unfortunately, the runs just haven't come the way they feel they should have when you're in really good form," he said.
"I've probably been in this situation before in the past where you can keep playing and get yourself deeper into a hole. I think now is a good time to give myself a mental and physical break and get my body right.
"After the first few games hadn't really gone to plan personally for me, I thought it was a pretty easy decision to make. I went to the coaches, (captain) Faf (du Plessis) last game and said, 'It's probably time we tried someone else'.
"I felt like I wasn't contributing in a positive way with the bat... and with our results and the position we find ourselves in on the table, it's a good time to give someone else an opportunity to try and show their wares and hopefully someone can make that spot their own."
Maxwell has not ruled himself out of returning for RCB's final six games of the season. But he admitted that there were no obvious reasons behind his current struggles with the bat.
"I probably just haven't got away, it's as simple as that. In the first few games, I felt like I made reasonably good decisions but was still finding ways to get out," Maxwell added.
"It can happen in T20 cricket and when it can snowball like that and you feel like you're not getting the runs, you can start to go searching and try too hard and forget about the basics of the game.
"Even if you look at the first game, I ran one off the middle of the bat to the keeper by picking up the length really well. I saw a scoring opportunity and I opened the face (of the bat) a little bit too much.
"When you're going really well, that goes just wide of the gloves, you get a boundary and you're four off one and all of a sudden you're away for the tournament. T20 cricket can be like that sometimes, it's a pretty fickle game."