Sydney: Swashbuckling Australian batsman Glenn Maxwell dismissed reports that he had criticised Virat Kohli, saying it was ‘completely untrue’ and the Australian team was actually ‘in awe’ of the India Test captain.
Maxwell on Friday took to social media to clear the air about the reports. “Taken out of context… I also complimented him (Kohli) on how well he had played and got his team into a winning position,” Maxwell wrote on his twitter handle yesterday.
Maxwell also spoke to Cricket Australia to clarify his comments about Kohli. “I was asked to give a bit of an assessment of who was dominating with the bat in this series, and I said ‘I don’t think anyone in the world is hitting the ball better than Virat at the moment’,” Maxwell told cricket.com.au.
“A lot of us are still in awe of what he can do on the field, and the way that he all but took the game away from us the other night in Canberra was something that we were pretty much powerless to stop.
“But some of the reporting I’ve seen today makes it seem like I was personally attacking one of the best players in the game about the way he plays, which is completely untrue.”
Further clarifying his comments, Maxwell said: “Maintaining a constant scoring rate can be less straightforward batting first than when you’re chasing and you know what the required rate has to be, and there have been times when batters just seem to have slowed a bit to make sure they reach those milestones. Sometimes that wins you games, and sometimes it doesn’t but that was the only point I was trying to make.”
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