Glenn Maxwell had “great fun” reaching his double hundred at the Wankhede in Mumbai on Tuesday though he struggled to comprehend what he had achieved.

The all-rounder ended the match with his tenth six, battling cramps on both legs and a stiff back, as Australia defeated Afghanistan in what had appeared to be a lost cause.

“It’s so fresh at the moment I’m a bit numb to it,” Maxwell said. “It was great fun. It just felt like it was me and Patty (Cummins) having fun out there. I’ll probably reflect a bit more over the next few days and hopefully recover and get some movement back in my hamstring and calves. It’s pretty raw at the moment.”

“We talked about coming off and trying to get some work into my back and trying to loosen up my legs a little bit,” Maxwell said. “The physio said it would be really
hard for you to come back out down the stairs after that. It probably made the job a little more simple.

“Then we came up with let’s stay at the same end for as long as you can, until you can at least walk at the other end if there is an easy single. But for a while there it was ‘if I can get one or two boundaries from the other end’ it didn’t really matter what happened the other end. Because we got it to a run-a-ball by that stage. There was certain planning, it wasn’t all just chaotic swinging.”

Maxwell said that when the requirement was down to around 60 or 70 runs he really started to believe the miracle would be possible.

“We knew Rashid (Khan) had about 18 balls left that was going to happen in the last 13 overs or something like that,” he said. “As long as we kept him out of the game I felt like I could hit boundaries off the others. So was more about negating him, not letting him have a shot at the rest of the tail. If we could keep him out of the backend of the game we’d be alright.

“To be able to string six wins together at the right time, and we didn’t have our best stuff tonight (Tuesday), against a pretty spirited opposition so to be in the semis is a great feeling and hopefully we enjoy a few days in Pune. I’ll stay away from the golf carts.”

Candid Cummins

For captain Pat Cummins, it was a matter of survival after being reduced to 91/7.

“When I went out there, I thought if we can somehow scratch the 200, our net run rate should be pretty good for the semi-final. When Maxi got his 100, I kind of thought, wow, we are within 120 or something. And then I still thought, no way,” Cummins admitted.

“I think Maxi might be a bit different. I think he is always plotting his way to a win. I think he was kind of mapping out how he was going to do it. I was just trying to survive,” Cummins said.

“Just ridiculous … I don’t know how you describe that,” he said. “Maxi was out of this world. It’s got to be the greatest ODI innings that’s ever happened.”

“It was just one of those days when you go, ‘yep, when that happened. I was here at the stadium’,” Cummins said. “We feel very lucky to be here. I couldn’t get on strike.”