Maxwell issues timely reminder to Australian selectors

While Michael Clarke’s men were busy losing the Ashes at Trent Bridge, Glenn Maxwell was busy offering Australia hope for the future, scoring his maiden first-class hundred for Yorkshire with a tenacity missing from his country’s Test team.

Maxwell’s 140, made from 144 balls with 17 fours and two sixes, helped Yorkshire to 420-9 on day two against Durham.

It was not a one-man show by the man nicknamed ‘The Big Show’, Adil Rashid scoring 127 from 164 balls with 21 fours, but it was proof that Maxwell is a multi-dimensional talent.

The 26-year-old, who is with the county until the end of the month, has made his name in the one-day game – not least at the World Cup earlier this year.

But he has made no secret of his desire to add to his tally of three Test appearances, the last of them against Pakistan at Abu Dhabi last November, and performances like this will do him no harm.

This was only Maxwell’s 34th first-class game, and the key for him is greater exposure.

Up until the early 1960s, players took part in as many first-class matches in one county season.

After a poor T20 Blast, in which he scored 229 runs in 12 innings, Maxwell has lately come into his own.

He is Yorkshire’s leading run-scorer in the Royal London Cup, with 312 at 52 with one group game left.

Maxwell has tried to play in a more controlled manner – he believes he tried too hard at the start of his Yorkshire stint – but he still scores at a fair old lick. He has a highly aggressive and free-flowing style; “see ball, hit ball” perhaps sums it up.

On Saturday, Maxwell and Rashid took the game away from Durham and bucked the trend of a wicket-strewn contest.

Twenty-five of them had fallen in the first four sessions before they batted throughout the fifth, adding 248 in total in 46 overs –longer than the duration of both first innings.

When they came together 20 minutes before lunch, Graham Onions having just had Andrew Gale caught behind to record his 500th first-class wicket, Yorkshire were 79-5 and the lead was only 85.

But Maxwell and Rashid rattled along at over five-an-over during a stand that was Yorkshire’s fourth-highest for the sixth-wicket, and the highest for that wicket in first-class cricket at Scarborough, beating the 201 by Phil Mead and George Thompson for the Players against the Gentlemen in 1911.

Maxwell was punishing all around the ground, particularly on the leg-side and through the covers, and he received outstanding support from Rashid.

Both fell in not dissimilar manner, caught at deep cover by Graham Clark, and they treated the 4,100 crowd to some memorable strokes.

Rashid passed 5,500 first-class runs in a game in which he earlier captured his 400th first-class wicket. It was at this ground that he made his first-class debut as an 18-year-old in 2006.