Cricket star Glenn Maxwell stuns his teammates by making shock move to safeguard his mental health

Superstar all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has revealed he asked to be dropped from his IPL team and was seeking a mental refresh following diminishing returns to 'get my body right' for the T20 World Cup.

Maxwell didn't play for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the high-scoring loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad and said he felt it was the right time to take a 'mental and physical break' after scoring just 32 runs in six innings.

His slump has included three ducks as RCB slumped to the bottom of the standings with just one win and 28 of his runs came in a single innings.

Maxwell said it wasn't unusual to go through poor runs in T20 cricket and was confident his efforts before the IPL would return in time for Australia's World Cup campaign.

'I don't think I've had a better six months in cricket leading into this tournament, so it's frustrating when it ends up like this,' he said.

'Unfortunately, the runs just haven't come the way they feel they should have when you're in really good form.

'I've probably been in this situation before in the past where you can keep playing and get yourself deeper into a hole.

'I think now is a good time to give myself a mental and physical break and get my body right.

'After the first few games hadn't really gone to plan personally for me, I thought it was a pretty easy decision to make.

'I went to the coaches, (captain) Faf (du Plessis) last game and said, 'It's probably time we tried someone else'.

'I felt like I wasn't contributing in a positive way with the bat ... and with our results and the position we find ourselves in on the table, it's a good time to give someone else an opportunity to try and show their wares and hopefully someone can make that spot their own.'

Maxwell wasn't ruling himself out of the remaining six games but needed to 'get back into a solid mental and physical space where I can have an impact still for RCB'.

He said there was no obvious reason as to why the runs hadn't come given his lead-in had been so good.

'I probably just haven't got away, it's as simple as that,' Maxwell said.

'In the first few games, I felt like I made reasonably good decisions but was still finding ways to get out.

'It can happen in T20 cricket and when it can snowball like that and you feel like you're not getting the runs, you can start to go searching and try too hard and forget about the basics of the game.

'Even if you look at the first game, I ran one off the middle of the bat to the keeper by picking up the length really well.

'I saw a scoring opportunity and I opened the face (of the bat) a little bit too much, and when you're going really well, that goes just wide of the gloves, you get a boundary and you're four off one and all of a sudden you're away for the tournament.

'T20 cricket can be like that sometimes, it's a pretty fickle game.'

Maxwell, who smashed an epic 55-ball 120 against the West Indies in Adelaide in February, joined fellow Australian Cameron Green on the sidelines having also been dropped.