As Glenn Maxwell's home state insisted his future in Victoria was not over, former Test captain Mark Taylor says the out of favour all-rounder needs to become more of a team player if he is to play all three forms of the game for Australia.
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His comments came as Maxwell was again left out of the one-day international side in the wake of his controversial comments about state and national teammate Matthew Wade.
Maxwell's troubles have deflected attention away from an Australian hierarchy that was under the microscope after the inglorious failure in the Test series against South Africa.
Maxwell is still a chance to play in the final game against New Zealand in Melbourne on Friday, but his chances of featuring in next month's series against Pakistan are likely to hinge on his performances in the Big Bash League.
Opinion is divided in Australian cricket over how best to handle the mercurial Maxwell, who has fallen foul of state and national officials this summer.
While former players such as Shane Warne and Simon Katich have backed Maxwell, saying he is far too good a player to be sidelined, others feel his performances do not warrant national selection.
There is also a belief his behaviour, even before his public comments about Wade, had not been befitting a player now into his fifth season of international cricket.
Taylor, a Cricket Australia board member, recognises the impact Maxwell can have on games but said he needed to change his ways if he was to become a regular part of the national set-up.
"What Australian cricket is trying to do is put an arm around Glenn Maxwell," Taylor said on SEN Breakfast on Tuesday.
"Everyone who knows Glenn and watches him play knows he can be a match-winner as Warnie suggests.
"There's also a team side to it as well. I think they're trying to make sure he gets that balance right between being the individual, brilliant Glenn Maxwell that he can be but also the team player – one of 11 players.
"If he gets that right, and hopefully he will, I'm like Warnie, I think he can play all three formats of the game."
Maxwell also faces an uncertain future at domestic level for his comments about Victoria captain Wade, which have put him offside with state teammates, though the break in the Sheffield Shield for the Big Bash has given player and team time apart.
There has been a widely held suspicion Maxwell was dropped from the Bushrangers' shield team at the start of the season in response to his failed bid to defect to NSW, but that has been denied by Victoria.
With speculation mounting that Maxwell will leave at the end of the season, there is a strong chance he has played his last game for his home state. If he is picked for the tour of India, Maxwell will not be available for the second half of the shield season.
The Bushrangers say there has not been a line put through Maxwell. "If he's available to us for the first shield game he'll certainly be considered very strongly for selection," Victoria's chairman of selectors Andrew Lynch said.
