Australia’s Glenn Maxwell retires from international cricket

Australian cricketer Glenn Maxwell has called time on his international cricket career, according to a media report. Maxwell is a two-time Cricket World Cup winner besides helping Australia cross the finish line by scoring the winning runs when they were crowned T20 world champions in 2021.

Maxwell ends his Australia innings having played seven Tests (scoring 339 runs), 149 One-Day Internationals and 130 T20Is. While he played for his country in all three formats, he was known as a formidable batter in white ball cricket.

A report by Cricinfo noted that the 38-year-old Australian will also retire from first-class and List A cricket. However, Maxwell will still play for Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash League. He recently extended his contract to the 2027-28 season.

"We probably had numerous discussions before and after the T20 World Cup. And it was it was pretty open ended. There wasn't any pressure from that side [Australia team management], and we decided to sort of leave the door open.

There was a couple of series that were coming up; they were going to look to the future, and we saw that in Bangladesh with guys getting their opportunity and performing really well," Maxwell said on the Final Word podcast.

REVISIT | Deep depression to double-ton high, Glenn Maxwell is Australia’s last action hero Maxwell lamented: "I suppose, a small hope or discussion that I might have been able to potentially get a send-off game at the MCG.

But I can completely understand the direction they're going with this squad. There's going to be a lot of change, I suppose, over the next 12 to 24 months with the Olympics coming up [in 2028], and they've got to make sure that they get their eyeballs on a few young guys coming through and making sure that they're getting exposed to international pressure that you probably can't always get from a BBL fixture." Maxwell played his last Test for Australia in 2017 and had previously retired from ODIs after the 2025 Champions Trophy, after smashing 3990 runs in 50-over games for Australia.

His last T20I was against Oman in February this year. Maxwell retired as one of the only two cricketers to score five centuries in T20 cricket. He is also credited with playing one of the best ODI innings in the sport's history when he dragged Australia to a three-wicket victory over Afghanistan in the Cricket World Cup in 2023.

After Afghanistan set Australia a target of 292, the Aussies were 91 for 7. Then Maxwell had taken over, scoring an unbeaten 201 to drag Australia into the semi-finals. REVISIT | Glenn Maxwell limps, crawl, falls but still sprints past the finish line against Afghanistan at Cricket World Cup In the conversation on Final Word podcast, Maxwell revealed that he was tempted to get himself ready to be in the mix for England's upcoming white-ball tour, which includes a T20I in Melbourne.

"The option was there, but I was sort of ready to push the button on getting an injection on my knee to make sure I was ready for the BBL. So there was sort of a positive either way. And as soon as that door was shut, I was able to start to put some time back into my body.

Eight weeks of solid rehab again to make sure I'm strong and ready for for the BBL coming up. So probably just the small fairy tale that you sort of see these your heroes and idols sort of go through. You start to sort of let your mind drift towards that, and probably no other format I probably would have asked for it, except for this one, where I feel like it's been it's almost felt like home over the last 15 years," said Maxwell.

Maxwell had once (in a podcast “Ordineroli speaking” hosted by Neroli Meadows) opened up about his mental demons during a Cricket World Cup. He had revealed that he had had a meltdown when he was in a room with his then fiancée, now wife, Vini Raman.

the reason for this was because he was named in the team that was to play England in the semi-final. Maxwell said he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to take the field. He had also consequently taken a break for mental health reasons.

"I was pretty cooked when I decided to take the time off," Maxwell had said back then. "Big reason why I did take that time away is I was pretty mentally and physically ruined. I think it was eight months on the road, living out of a suitcase and that probably had been going on for four or five years, just constantly on the road and it all just caught up with me at that time.

I really want to thank Cricket Australia, Cricket Victoria and the Stars for giving me that space and allowing me to have that time away from the game and get myself right." Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more.

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