Maxwell hopes to end red-ball exile

Such is Glenn Maxwell's desire to further his Test cricket aspirations, he's prepared to believe his decision to play for English county Yorkshire in their domestic T20 competition might also provide him with a "back door" opportunity to push his red-ball claims.

Yorkshire, reigning first-class county champions coached by former Australia fast bowler Jason Gillespie, announced yesterday that Maxwell would play in the coming season’s UK T20 Blast league that runs throughout the English summer from mid-May to the end of August.

Quick Single: Finch, Maxwell sign with Victoria

But the fact the 26-year-old allrounder will be in the UK for the duration of Australia’s Ashes tour means he could pursue options to play red-ball games between the weekly T20 fixtures and therefore be a potential stand-by player should ill-fortune befall a member of the Test touring party.

Given he already holds slim hope of being included in the initial touring party.

Australia’s Test team will arrive in England direct from their tour of the Caribbean in mid-June to prepare for the five-Test Ashes series that runs from July 8 to August 24.

Maxwell, who will join his Australian and Victorian teammate and former Melbourne housemate Aaron Finch at Headingley where Finch will play all formats for Yorkshire, believes red-ball cricket is the format to which his array of skills are best suited.

But his performances and popularity in the white-ball game have him in demand for 50-over internationals and T20 franchise commitments which means he has played only three first-class matches since the end of the previous Australian summer.

And it is that imbalance, and the scarcity of chances to show that could be a bona fide Test cricketer that it provides, which Maxwell is hoping his presence in England during the Australian winter help to overcome.

"Red ball cricket is a place I really want to be in but if you look at the schedule I’ve played two first-class games in the last four, five, six months maybe and I’m not going to play another one until October," Maxwell said shortly after being named Australia’s T20 International Player of the Year this week.

Look back on Maxwell's year in T20 cricket

"I'm trying to do everything I can to face more red-ball ... so (the Yorkshire signing) will hopefully help with English county cricket and hopefully open a little back door to red-ball cricket during the off-season.

"I find red ball cricket is still comfortably my best format.

"I find I’ve got so much more time, I’m so much more comfortable playing that especially with my bowling and my batting.

"It's just a matter of getting opportunities and I just haven’t had any opportunities over the last 12 months."

A quick trawl back through his recent first-class record underscores how few red-ball opportunities arise for those who excel in the more prevalent white-ball industry.

Maxwell has made just four Bupa Sheffield Shield appearances for the Commonwealth Bank Victoria Bushrangers in the past year and one of those matches – against the Alcohol. Thing Again Western Australia Warriors at the MCG – was abandoned after day one as a result of the Phillip Hughes tragedy.

In the return match in Perth two weeks later, Maxwell – who was profoundly affected by Hughes's death – was given out caught behind for 24 though he still maintains it was an incorrect decision.

In his other two first-class hit-outs for Victoria at the end of last summer he reeled off scores of 94, 127, 119 and four.

He made one first-class appearance for English county Hampshire during his brief stint there last Australian winter in which he scored 24 and 85 against a Worcestershire attack that included Pakistan spinner Saeed Ajmal.

Quick Single: Maturity, patience the key for Maxwell

And recalled to the Test XI to bolster an under-performing batting line-up for the second match against Pakistan in the UAE last October, Maxwell was installed at the pivotal number three berth where he scored 37 and four in Australia’s hefty 356-run defeat.

But as he foreshadowed, given the schedule as it stands Maxwell is now unlikely to play another red-ball match until the beginning of next summer's Shield season.

His involvement in the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup means he won’t be able to play for Victoria at Shield level unless the host nation is bundled out of the Cup disastrously early, and the Bushrangers make the Shield final.

The fact that once the World Cup is done he'll join the world's other white-ball stars in the Indian Premier League means he also won't have an opportunity to push his claims for the Australian team that plays two Tests in the West Indies en route to England.

And if it wasn't for the Yorkshire option, he would have faced a winter of little but practice nets until the limited-overs portion of the Ashes tour – in which he's likely to play - kicks off in late August.

Hence he's hanging his Baggy Green hat number 433 on the possibility of some red-ball action while cooling his heels between T20 appearances for Yorkshire Vikings.

It's an admitted long-shot, but Maxwell sees it as the only one left in the locker if he is to fulfil his Ashes dream.

Maxwell reflects on successful 2014

"Would I like to play the Ashes? Of course I would," he said when asked about his Test ambitions this week.

"How am I going to get there? I’ve got no idea.

"I've played one county game last year (with Hampshire), one Test match and one Shield game in the last 12 months so if you look back on that it’s not a whole lot of red-ball cricket to go by.

"And I didn't feel like I performed badly in any of those games.

"Two of them were in foreign conditions (England and the UAE) and one was at home where I got given out when I didn't hit it.

"Unfortunately things like that happen.

"But if you get five hits a year in red-ball cricket and one of those you get given out when you're not out, what can you do?"

His hope is that the answer to that rhetorical question lies in cricket’s great breeding grounds of north-west England.