'It just snapped': Maxwell details harrowing injury tale

Glenn Maxwell waited for nearly an hour in the rain after hearing his leg break at a backyard birthday party, revealing the gruesome details of how he suffered the horrific injury he fears will derail his immediate hopes of a long-coveted Test return.

Speaking on cricket.com.au's Unplayable Podcast from his home in Melbourne's southeast, the bed-ridden allrounder explained how an innocuous joke at a 50th birthday party with one of his former schoolteachers ended up with him shattering his left fibula.

Maxwell has since undergone surgery to repair the fracture and, although the limited-overs star concedes his dream of a Test recall on next year's India tour is hanging by a thread, he hopes the blow may actually end up extending his cricket career.

The party celebrating the birthday of an official at Maxwell's Premier Cricket side Fitzroy-Doncaster was being held in a small backyard area laid with synthetic grass made slippery from the persistent rain Melbourne has endured in recent months.

"One of my mates, who was also one of my schoolteachers, we were laughing about something and I pretended to chase him off somewhere," Maxwell said, adding that his ex-teacher was "absolutely devastated" after the incident.

"I reckon we both took about three or four steps out there, and both slipped at the same time. I just got my foot stuck a little bit, and he fell, unfortunately at a really bad angle and landed straight on my leg.

"It just snapped. I heard and felt every part of it. It was pretty painful.

"I was screaming a bit and he was like, 'please tell me you're joking, please tell me you're joking'."

Maxwell wasn't, and called for his wife, Vini as he lay prone for about 50 minutes. Eager not to make the injury worse by moving him unnecessarily, his friends erected a makeshift tent to protect him from the rain before it was decided, on doctors' advice, he would be driven to hospital.

"I probably didn't sleep for two days while I was in agony," he said. "It was it was a pretty horrible couple of days. My wife was unbelievable through it all.

"I shattered my fibula. So that one I think was the first snap I heard. It was snapped in half, but it also shattered through the bone.

"There was a bit of a chip off the tibia as well (and) I ruptured all the ligaments on top of my foot as well … the syndesmosis ligaments, they're all ruptured. I did a good job of it for such an innocuous thing.

"This is the frustrating thing about it all – I've done some dumb things on the field, some dumb things off the field, and I've never even come close to injuring myself (like this).

"To do something so innocuously, it's just frustrating. It was just a nothing incident. The amount of times that I've jumped into a pool and gone, 'that was probably a bit more shallow than I thought', and not had even a scratch, not even a bruise or anything, not even a rolled ankle.

"It was just a little bit slippery, and all of a sudden there goes a couple of months."

A mainstay of Australia's T20 side that won last year's World Cup but failed to defend their title at home and of the 50-over side gunning for a sixth men's ODI title in India next year, Maxwell has long harboured ambitions to add to his seven Test caps, the last of which came more than five years ago.

An opportunity to showcase his red-ball skills was set to come in the Marsh Sheffield Shield, with Maxwell revealing Victoria's home matches against Tasmania this week and NSW next week had long been circled on his calendar as a rare break in the international calendar.

"Out of all the cricket I was going to miss, these were the two games that probably hurt the most," said Maxwell, who has not played a first-class match since 2019 though came close as 12th man on Australia's Test tour of Sri Lanka earlier this year.

"I was so excited. Even the couple of sessions that I had with (Victoria assistant coach) Ben Rohrer and the Vics in the couple of days after the last World Cup game – I was working on different things again, much the same as Steve Smith was working on different things behind the scenes.

"It was just exciting again. I feel like I'm always improving when I'm playing this format, I feel like there's always a space where my technique can get better. It just feels like I make the biggest strides when I'm working on my red-ball game.

"Even Ben Rohrer – I spent I reckon 10 minutes with him and he picked up on things that I was working on in the pre-season that I might have gone away from a little bit just because I was working on a lot of T20 power hitting.

"For him to pull me back into that technical mindset straightaway, it was a lot of fun.

"That's why missing these two games (hurts). I think these two games are going to be the hardest to watch, knowing they would have been a great opportunity to play red-ball cricket again."

Maxwell, a strong player of spin whose Tests have all come in Asia, has not closed the door completely on regaining fitness for the February-March tour of India and coach Andrew McDonald has even suggested he could feature towards the end of the four-Test campaign.

But he is realistic about his chances given a broken fibula can take months to heal.

"There's a time limit on when they're going to announce that squad to India and to be fair, there's a high chance that I won't make it," he said.

"They're obviously going have to see me playing cricket and they're obviously going to have to take a big risk if they do take me.

"But I think that's probably why I don't want to sort of set any dates or timelines of when I can get back. I would dearly love to be okay for that but I'm a slave to how my body recovers and how quickly I can I suppose get the strength back into it and then get back playing cricket again."

On the one hand, the devastating blow has forced Maxwell into a sobering re-evaluation of how the final few years of his cricket career might unfold.

On the other, it has reinvigorated a mercurial talent who has been frank about how the packed international schedule, combined with overseas T20 league commitments, can take a physical and mental toll.

Maxwell's rehabilitation could be aided by his beloved St Kilda Football Club, which has recently unveiled the Danny Frawley Centre in Melbourne's southeast that features state-of-the-art injury recovery and hydrotherapy facilities.

Saints great Justin Koschitzke, now a partnerships coordinator at the centre, has already been in touch with Maxwell suggesting he make use of the Moorabbin facility which is only a 10-minute drive from his home in Black Rock.

"As weird as it sounds … it's probably not the worst time in my career to have a bit of a break," said Maxwell.

"Even when I did the injury I was like, ‘I'm gonna finish my career the fittest have ever been, I'm gonna make sure that I never have another soft tissue injury again, I'm going to be so focused on the gym work’.

"It has refocused me a little bit. I think that's the one silver lining I see.

"If I don't get injured, I probably go through the summer, maybe go to India as the spare player on that (Test) tour, play that one-day series, finish the IPL (Indian Premier League) and I'm cooked by the end of June and I'm probably looking at the end of my career a lot sooner.

"My body is tired and cooked, and the end is probably closer than it should have been at 34.

"But I think now I can reassess and make sure that for the back end of my career, I'm fit, strong, healthy and hopefully in a better state for next year's World Cup and all tournaments going forward.

"I can still keep pushing forward and finish my career off on a high instead of it fizzling out and not being able to finish it the way I would have liked."