Glenn Maxwell retires from international cricket after 14 years and three world titles

Glenn Maxwell has retired from international cricket at 38, closing a 14-year Australia career that delivered three world titles

The all-rounder confirmed the decision on The Final Word podcast, and it reaches well past the international game. Maxwell has also stepped away from 50-over and red-ball cricket for Victoria, leaving franchise T20 as the only cricket he intends to keep playing.

He finishes with 149 ODIs, 130 T20Is and seven Tests for Australia, having already given up one-day international cricket in June 2025.

His last appearance in Australian colours came in the team's final match of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026, against Oman.

No send-off at the MCG

Maxwell had hoped the end might be marked with a farewell match at the MCG, but said he understood why the selectors had moved on. "I can completely understand the direction they're going with this squad," he said.

He also put the decision down to his body as much as to selection. "It's probably a time where I probably need to spend a little bit more time investing in the body," Maxwell said, with a run of franchise tournaments still ahead of him.

The retirement was announced rather than staged, with no final international fixture arranged.

He had already stopped playing ODIs in June 2025 to concentrate on this year's T20 World Cup, so Monday's decision ends the international career rather than starting its wind-down.

Fourteen years of white-ball output

Maxwell scored 3,990 runs in ODIs at a strike rate of 126.7, and 2,897 runs in T20Is at 154.4. The T20I tally is the third-highest for Australia, behind only David Warner and Aaron Finch.

He made ten international hundreds across the three formats, and is one of five Australian men to have scored a century in all of them. The ICC puts his international haul at 136 wickets with his off-spin.

The Test career was slight by comparison, seven matches in all. His value to Australia sat in the white-ball formats, where he batted as a middle-order accelerator and bowled as a sixth option.

The trophies came in clusters: the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup in 2015 and 2023, and the T20 World Cup in 2021, where he hit the winning runs in the final.

Five T20I hundreds and a mark shared with Rohit

Only Maxwell and India's Rohit Sharma have made five T20I centuries. The first came in Pallekele, an unbeaten 145 from 65 balls with nine sixes.

The other four all came at number four, spread between 2018 and 2024, a position he made his own in a format that rarely rewards a settled batting order.

He struck at 154.4 across those 130 matches, a rate that held up over more than a decade of changing Australian T20 line-ups.

The 201 that defined a World Cup

His defining innings was an unbeaten 201 against Afghanistan at the 2023 World Cup, made in a chase and from a position Australia looked certain to lose. It is remembered as one of the finest ODI wins the country has had.

The same tournament brought a century from 40 balls, the fastest in World Cup history, and ended with Australia lifting the trophy.

A Big Bash title still outstanding

Maxwell is contracted to the Melbourne Stars through the 2027-28 season and is still chasing a first Big Bash title, the one significant prize his career has not produced.

He has not played a first-class match since 2023, so the red-ball element of the announcement formalises a gap rather than ending an active commitment. He said he would manage his knee to be ready for the Big Bash.

The Stars open their season against the Adelaide Strikers at the MCG on December 18.

Maxwell leaves the international game with the franchise circuit as his remaining stage, and a Big Bash summer at the MCG as his next assignment.

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