With only a few days left for the start of IPL 2021, preparations for the tournament are in full flow, with players who have completed their quarantine sweating it out outdoors while those still in quarantine exercising inside their team hotel rooms.
Recently during an interview Australian all rounder Glenn Maxwell talks about his experience in quarantine life, he said that the break taken by him from cricket a year ago to deal with mental health issues proved timely in helping him build the tools to handle the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this interview Maxwell also talks about his IPL 2021 auction experience. Maxwell was roped in by RCB in the auction held in Chennai last February, for a whopping INR 14.25, despite another poor IPL season for Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) in the 2020 edition. In 13 appearances that season, he scored only 108 runs at a strike rate of 101.88.
Meanwhile elaborating on the significance of Maxwell, Director Cricket Operations for Royal Challengers Bangalore Hesson explained that the team think tank had analyzed their batting right through the previous season to identify areas they needed to get better at. Among those was the middle phase (overs 7 to 15), where the Royal Challengers had the lowest run rate among the eight sides.
RCB started IPL 2020 brightly before their challenge withered away towards the latter stages of the tournament. They will hope to start on a positive note this season as well and maintain that momentum as the tournament progresses.
Meanwhile RCB is set to play their first match against Mumbai Indians on 9th of April.
