'Hurt' Maxwell motivated by axing

Glenn Maxwell knew it was coming.

Despite being a World Cup winner, one of the top 20 ranked batsmen in the world and Australia's reigning ODI cricketer of the year, five consecutive single-figure scores leaves any player fearing for his immediate future.

Recap: Australia down Windies to advance to tri-series final

And when the selection axe finally came down during a training session in St Kitts last week, it left more than just a superficial wound.

"Trevor Hohns told me I was dropped ... I'd tried to avoid him for most of the session," Maxwell revealed on Wednesday following his match-winning performance against the West Indies in Barbados, his first match back in the XI since he'd been dumped.

"As much as you feel like you're hitting the ball well and training well, results are always in the back of your mind.

"After a couple of not great results in the first two games, it hurt being dropped at that stage.

"When you feel so ingrained in that side for such a long time, ODI Player of the Year, you feel like you need to be there.

"It's a team I want to be playing in for the next few World Cups, Champions Trophies, series in Australia, everything. I want to be part of that one-day side every game we play.

"So it hurt at the time but it probably motivated me to train a bit harder and re-assess where I needed to get better." 

Despite a run of outs that had pushed him out of Australia's best XI, Maxwell says he never questioned his ambitious and high-risk method of run-scoring, which produced five fours and two sixes in just 26 balls against the Windies in Barbados.

But that doesn't mean he wasn't on edge as he watched Australia move to within 61 runs of victory before he walked anxiously to the middle of Kensington Oval with eight overs remaining.

And as is the fickle nature of any sport, a slither of fortune either way can justify or discredit the best laid plans.

Maxwell's recent form was such that he'd faced a total of just 24 balls in ODI cricket since the start of February, a streak of just nine runs in five innings.

It included a vicious turning off-break from Sunil Narine in the first match of the tour, which spun sharply between his loose drive and clattered into the timber, before an incorrect umpiring decision - and the absence of an umpire review - cost him his wicket two days later.

And as the Victorian watched the first delivery he faced on Wednesday spin sharply past his outside edge and into the gloves of wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin, he knew it was the stroke of good fortune he'd been hoping for. 

"I've been pretty nervous in a few innings for Australia, but I was pretty nervous sitting in the sheds waiting to come out, especially since it was my first hit back from being dropped," he said.

"And it's amazing how you get a little bit of luck early on. I played and missed at one and I've been nicking those in the past five or six games.

"Even though that doesn't look like a lot of luck ... you can get through it.

"If you look back to the New Zealand series (in February) ... everything that I did wrong, I was out. So it was nice to make a mistake and get away with it early, which is sometimes what you need as a batter.

"In those sort of situations (you need to) capitalise on it and I felt like I did that tonight.

"I know my method and what's been successful for me. I don't really try and change that.

"It's just about being a bit more clinical and making sure (of it) in those little moments."

Maxwell seized his moment against the Windies and will be hoping to do so again in the tri-series final at Kensington on Monday morning (AEST).

And if he does so, the hurt of the selection axe will be simply a memory from the recent past, and no longer a foreboding of his immediate future.