After being dismissed by Mayank Yadav in an 2024 IPL match, Glenn Maxwell was full of praise for the Lucknow Super Giants pace sensation.

After taking the cricket world by storm on his IPL debut with a spell of 4-0-27-3 against the Punjab Kings, Mayank Yadav did even better against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, with 4-0-14-3. He was named the Player of the Match for both games.

Despite playing one match fewer, Mayank is now just one wicket behind Mustafizur Rahman, the current Purple Cap holder in IPL 2024. His 17 dot balls against RCB are, at the time of writing, the most in the season, while his 156.7 kph ball against Bengaluru is the fastest.

All six of his wickets have been of top-order batters. Against Bengaluru, he dismissed Glenn Maxwell with a short-pitched ball, beat Cameron Green with pace to hit the stumps, and used another bouncer to get Rajat Patidar.

Two days after Mayank’s scorching spell against Bengaluru, Maxwell heaped lavish praise on Mayank while speaking to ESPN’s Around the Wicket.

“He hurried on a few of the Punjab batters and I certainly did a little bit of homework before coming up against him,” admitted Maxwell while discussing his dismissal. “But it’s nothing doing homework against someone until you actually see it coming out of the hand and have to try and pick up the length.

“He bowled me the first one which was just a high bouncer and the wicket that we’ve been producing at [Bengaluru] has been a little bit two-paced, and it sort of came through a bit slower than I thought it was going to. And I was like, ah, that wasn’t too bad.

“And then the next one was hard length and skidded on probably faster than I thought it was going to be; and as you saw I went to pull thinking that I picked up the length really well and before you know it, it’s on you, hitting the shoulder the bat and ballooning up in the air. I thought it was really impressive.”

Maxwell was all in praise of Mayank, who has been the talk of the town since he burst into the IPL against Punjab: “He has some real extra speed that you don’t really see a lot of around world cricket at the moment. You see guys bowl pretty consistently around the 140s [kph] or high 140s, but to have mid-150s consistently in your arsenal is pretty formidable.”

“It’s such a beautiful, smooth action. He sort of glided through the crease really nicely. I think pace-wise, the only one that I can sort of really resemble it to is a little bit like Shaun Tait when he was in his heyday. I think when he was at the peak of his powers it was extremely hard to pick up the extra zip it feels like it has off the wicket. I think that’s as close as it probably comes to it.”

Tait, who played for Australia alongside Maxwell, is one of very few cricketers to have breached the 160kph barrier in recorded history. He hit 161.1kph against England at Lord’s in 2010.

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