Glenn Maxwell speaks out about freak leg accident at mate’s party in blow for Australia

Glenn Maxwell has lifted the lid on his agonising ordeal after breaking his leg during a freak accident at a friend’s birthday party.

The all-rounder fears he has a slim chance of returning in time for Australia’s Test series against India after injuring himself at an event at Fitzroy-Doncaster Premier Cricket, which was held in a small backyard area with synthetic grass.

After heavy rain during the day, the surface was wet when Maxwell decided to race his friend and former schoolteacher. 

Glenn Maxwell has revealed his leg injury agony after suffering a long-term setback

‘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 told Cricket Australia’s Unplayable podcast via the Daily Telegraph. 

‘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 lay in agony for nearly an hour, and friends had to erect a small tent over him to protect him from the rain.   

A doctor advised his friends to drive the 34-year-old to a hospital, and Maxwell says the journey was ‘one of the most painful drives I’ve ever had in my life’. 

The 34-year-old snapped his leg while celebrating a mate’s birthday party this month

‘I probably didn’t sleep for two days while I was in agony,’ he said. ‘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.

It means that the all-rounder is unlikely to make his Test return against India next year

‘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.’

Maxwell was in line to make a return to the Test team on their tour of India, but that now appears to be out of the question.