Melbourne, Nov 22 (IANS): Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has revealed he did not sleep for two days because of the agonising pain he suffered following a freak injury that snapped his fibula in half earlier this month.
The 34-year-old was rushed to hospital where he underwent a successful surgery and has started to slowly recover, but the veteran cricketer has said that initially the pain was unbearable.
Despite the setback, Maxwell has not given up hope and is keen to feature in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on Australia's tour of India next year.
"I probably didn't sleep for two days while I was in agony," Maxwell was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au. "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."
Detailing the circumstances that led to the grievous injury, Maxwell said he was attending a friend's party earlier this month in Melbourne when he slipped on some synthetic grass in the rain before being rushed to hospital.
"One of my mates, who was also one of my school teachers, we were laughing about something and I pretended to chase him off somewhere," said Maxwell. "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 (fibula) 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'.
"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 (of recovery)."