MatthewWade

The son of former Hawthorn player Scott Wade and cousin of AFL player Jeremy Howe, Matthew Wade was also a talented footballer growing up in Tasmania before he moved to Victoria to further his cricket career.

Having overcome testicular cancer when he was just 16, the wicketkeeper batsman arrived in Victoria with a fresh perspective on life and within two seasons he had established himself as the first-choice wicketkeeper.

He made 83 and took six catches on first-class debut in 2007 and scored a crucial 96 to guide the Bushrangers to victory in the 2009-10 Sheffield Shield final.

He scored 677 runs that season and another 553 the following summer to earn an international Twenty20 call-up before he made his Test debut in the West Indies in 2012 after Brad Haddin returned home due to personal reasons.

Wade took his chance, scoring 106 in the third Test and then posting an unbeaten 102 against Sri Lanka in the 2013 New Year’s Test.

But he lost his Test spot after his form with bat and gloves dropped, with Haddin returning to the side as vice-captain for the Ashes series, before eventually forcing his way back for a mostly unsuccessful stint in 2016 and 2017.

From here, some considered Wade’s international career to be over, and he spent almost two years outside the Test, ODI and T20 side.

But a Test recall saw Wade score two centuries in the 2019 Ashes series in England, before eventually establishing himself as a ‘finisher’ in the T20 side.

Wade’s match-winning innings of 41 not out off just 17 balls in the 2021 T20 World Cup semi-final against Pakistan – a knock that saw him close out the match with three consecutive sixes off Shaheen Shah Afridi – saw him crowned Player of the Match in perhaps Australia’s most memorable individual performance in the format.