Betting on batting on the edge - Maxwell defies the laws of physics in Delhi

Twenty-nine balls into his innings, Glenn Maxwell is waiting. His legs apart, facing the bowler front-on, wrists cocked, right one crossed over the left. In his own way, he is ready.

He is in the middle of the most manic of this World Cup's innings, in which he would go on to demolish the record for fastest World Cup hundred, set only 17 days ago. Two balls before this, he has reverse swept a full ball on leg stump from seamer Bas de Leede way into the stands behind backward point.

This time, though, the bowler has banged a slower one into the pitch, and the ball is getting up towards head height. It may be the only few split seconds his hands are not in fast motion at the crease, but he picks the pace, judges the length, and though he's not quite got the ball he needs for the shot he is attempting, he commits.

When you bat as audaciously as Maxwell, half the game is committing.

Committing to pre-determined shots even when the ball is less than ideal, yes, but also committing to practicing strokes only a few have ever successfully played before, and committing to a style of play that frequently appears unwise when balls go off the top edge and into fielders' hands, and early career nicknames like "the big show" gain a sarcastic edge on the lips of your doubters.

Because Maxwell commits, throwing himself into the air as he plays the shot, every muscle and sinew in his limbs transferring power into his bat, he connects well enough to shovel the ball over the wide-third boundary.

The result in the stands is elation - Indian crowds having followed Maxwell through several big IPLs, and who are by now baying for sixes. The result for the bowler is discombobulation. Earlier this over, de Leede had stacked his leg side and bowled a fullish ball on a leg-side line that flew over backward point. Now he has given Maxwell little pace to work with, and delivered a bouncer at his body. Still it disappears in a direction Maxwell has no earthly right accessing.

"The uniqueness of Maxwell is that Bas is trying to bowl to the leg side, and he can reverse you over the off side," Logan van Beek, who conceded two sixes to Maxwell in the next over, said after the match. "As a bowler, you're thinking: 'I want to get hit to the leg side, but he's just hit my leg-side ball over cover for six; where do I go next?' I think it's the fact that he can assess the situation, assess the plan of the bowler, and find a way to counteract it. He won't necessarily wait for the bowler to miss, but he will create a miss."

Maxwell is one of only a handful of batters who would conceive of and play these shots, or conceive of and play this sort of innings.

But it is a batting life against the odds. In 123 ODI innings, Maxwell has crossed fifty 26 times. In the lead-up to this innings, his scores had been 0, 31 not out off 21, 3, 15, 5, and 8. It is true for most batters, that failure comes more often than success, but for players who bat as adventurously as Maxwell, the air is even thinner.

But these are the days Maxwell lives for, the days that make all the committing worth it. Days when he plays shots that defy almost all his sport's conventions, whose physics are a wonder to behold, whose angles may never have been seen on a field before, and which collectively melt the brain.

When de Leede came back to bowl his next over, he was increasingly a bewildered bowler. He went to yorkers, which in the modern game few deliver with consistent success. He was struck for two fours down the ground when he bowled too short. He then overcorrected, bowled waist-high full tosses. Maxwell launched these practically into orbit over the leg side, getting to 100 off 40 balls with the third of these.

Maxwell had turned the bowler into a lobber of lavishly hittable balls because he had earlier played strokes that almost anyone who has ever padded up would consider mad, rash, low-percentage. Having faced his first ball in the 41st over, he smoked 106 off 44 to the delight of Delhi, because he has bet his career on batting on the edge.