DANE ELDRIDGE: Glenn Maxwell faces an uncertain future in Australia T20 team heading into World Cup

Despite the best efforts of sports science and blind faith, Australia’s cricket team continues to age like an old banana.

After dispatching England this summer with a patchwork team of veterans and their support staff, this time it’s our T20 side wrangling with Father Time.

Worse still, these ravages have festered so disastrously close to the eve of the upcoming ICC World Championship it’s akin to the side developing cataracts during the national anthems.

Australia will begin their tournament tonight against Ireland with a squad as makeshift as it is panel-beaten, with the late injury withdrawals of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood compounded by the ongoing niggles carried by Nathan Ellis, Adam Zampa and Tim David. David is being rested for the opener, while Ellis and Zampa will play.

Add the side’s disastrous 3-0 thrashing in its warm up series against Pakistan - a colossal facepalm that included Australia’s worst defeat in its 222-game T20 history - and our promising campaign is suddenly crumbling like a digestive biscuit.

Ironically, these analogous biscuits are set to figure heavily in most of these blokes diets in a few years time considering nine of Australia’s 15 man squad are aged over 30.

In fact, this group is again so skewed towards middle age that even the replacements for Cummins and Hazlewood in Sean Abbott (33) and Ben Dwarshuis (31) are already long in the tooth.

For all his match-winning fare, the big-hitting Victorian is now largely squirreled away in the batting order at seven like he’s our dirty little secret.

It makes you wonder why selectors cannot find room for Steve Smith despite his white-hot form and proximity to the team’s median age.

Nevertheless, there is one elder statesman in this Aussie squad who isn’t bestowed preferential treatment by selectors.

Like any time he takes guard, this upcoming tournament shapes as yet another referendum on Glenn Maxwell and the misuse thereof.

At 37 years of age, Maxwell is one of those cricketers who a decade ago would’ve been spending his time searching for a suitable home brew kit rather than a way to clear a man at deep square with a switch-hit.

However, he still finds himself a mainstay in white ball cricket not only on account of Australia’s belief in eternal youth, but also because selectors are seduced by his attributes as an otherworldly match-winner.

Yes, Australia’s hierarchy has immense trust in Maxwell- except when it comes to playing cricket.

In Japanese workplace culture there is a concept known as Oidashibeya whereby an employer reduces a staff member’s responsibilities in the hope they’ll resign in shame.

Sometimes you’ve gotta wonder if Aussie selectors are doing the same by continually banishing Maxwell to the lower order in the hope he’ll end his own career by accepting a redundancy in franchise leagues.

For all his match-winning fare, the big-hitting Victorian is now largely squirrelled away in the batting order at seven like he’s our dirty little secret.

Yes, there is logic considering Maxwell is the same player who can smash a match-winning double hundred on one leg and get bowled shouldering arms to a straight one.

But for all his outlier behaviour, there is one steady constant in his makeup: his numbers up the order.

Maxwell boasts a top-notch average of 42.76 as an opener in international T20 at a ferocious 181 strike rate - and a next-best average coming in at four of 37.52 with two centuries.

Yet despite this, he continues to be largely warehoused down the order for the Melbourne Stars and for Australia much to our bemusement and chagrin.

This reached peak absurdity in the Stars rain-reduced semifinal against the Hurricanes in January when Maxwell was left inactivated despite his side chasing 85 from just seven overs in reply, only entering the match in the second-last over to face four balls in an excruciating three run loss.

For whatever reason, Maxwell’s role in T20 has become extreme chicken and egg stuff.

With his last start at the top order in green and gold coming against the West Indies in July last year - and the Big Show admitting afterwards it was likely to never happen again - it means he only comes to the crease with either not enough time or not enough wickets to set loose.

And even in a turbocharged batting order like Australia’s, this leaves Andrew McDonald’s side like cricket’s version of Iran and their supposed WMDs.

And while admittedly against Australia’s B-side, the Pakistan series should’ve served a warning against his gross wastage.

With the 3-0 battering provided a chilling portent to what awaits Australia in this tournament - ie spin, spin and more spin - Maxwell’s value should be heightened because we need his TNT to break a spinning chokehold - even if it can detonate with the same timing and success as Wile E. Coyote.

It’s better than asking him to batten down and play safe or run wild like a contestant in Supermarket Sweep who’s only given 15 seconds on the clock.