50 overs Australia 376 for 9 (Maxwell 102, Smith 72, Clarke 68, Watson 67) v Sri Lanka
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Every time Glenn Maxwell walks out to bat with overs to spare, a flurry of record-holders must watch from behind their couches and through the cracks between their fingers. Kevin O'Brien's fastest hundred in a World Cup match has become an endangered species, but has somehow managed to survive yet another hunt-down by Maxwell. Still Maxwell proceeded to score his first ODI hundred, the fastest by an Australian, bringing it up on the 51st ball he faced, taking Australia to 376 despite two mini wobbles - one at the top that reduced them to 41 for 2 and then the wickets of half-centurions Steve Smith and Michael Clarke in one go and just before the batting Powerplay. Shane Watson scored arguably the most inconspicuous 67 off 41 with Maxwell taking centre stage.

The most instructive moment of the Maxwell innings was perhaps near the end. He was on 99 off 49. Still with a chance to trickle one around the corner and register the joint-fastest World Cup hundred. Also with the knowledge that he had missed out on that elusive hundred at least four times in the past. He looked to nudge Lasith Malinga, missed a slower ball, ran what he thought was a leg-bye, but saw umpire Ian Gould in no hurry to raise his leg. Greater batsmen with many more centuries to their name than Maxwell have snuck in a single at such moments, but Maxwell seemed to instruct to Gould he hadn't hit it. The leg-bye was finally signalled.

Obviously it has been frustrating for Maxwell to have not scored that hundred, but he wasn't going to bring up his first in an underhand manner. Probably if you are in the form that Maxwell is, you know you are going to bring up that opportunity every other time you bat. When he came in to bat, with Smith and Clarke having fallen in the space of five balls, Maxwell had no business batting the way he did. This was time to rebuild. Maxwell, he just watched six deliveries to get a hang of the conditions and chipped the seventh over mid-off for four, and reverse-swept the eighth for a single.

Apart from that reverse sweep, which surely is text-book stuff in Maxwell's book, the initial parts of his innings were classic. He saw Tillakaratne Dilshan bowling with mid-off up, kept chipping him over the man in the 35th over, hitting two, a four and a six. There is a theory about Maxwell's batting that he doesn't bat according to the merit of the ball but to the field set. He is extremely confident that he can pull off any shot, but he fashions them to miss the field. This innings was a big testimony to the idea: there was no brute hitting involved, just clever placement of balls where the fielders weren't.

To outsiders the shots Maxwell played in order to miss the fielders seem risky, to him they are routine. Legspinner Seekkuge Prasanna was the second to experience it. First he saw Maxwell flick him over square leg for a six without bending his knee at all. Then came the reverse-flick in the same over, the 37th. In the next over Malinga bowled a yorker with a strong leg-side field, which Maxwell drilled over extra cover.

Prasanna in the 41st over saw more of it with Maxwell toying around with the deep fielder on the leg side. He beat him to his left first with a reverse sweep, then to his right with a delayed regulation sweep, and then again to his left with a slog sweep. The fastest hundred remained on the cards throughout with Malinga beginning the 45th over with Maxwell on 96 off 47.

One of the best bowlers at the death, Malinga denied him the boundary ball two in a row, sending him off strike with his score 99 off 49. Then came the leg-bye. Only after Maxwell brought up the hundred, sparking wide celebrations, did everybody realise that Watson had made a successful comeback to the side. Watson had himself galloped along to 53 off 31 by then. That in turn had put to shade the rebuilding effort by Smith and Clarke from the early blip, a 134-run stand that underlined the importance of solid batsmen sandwiched between two sets of power hitters.