Birthday special: Matthew Wade – Australia’s favourite all-season cricketer

Matthew Wade, born on 26th December 1987, has represented Australia across all the formats of the game as a wicketkeeper. He plies his trade in domestic first-class and List-A cricket for the Tasmanian cricket team as a skipper. Wade kicked off his domestic journey in the year 2006-07 by playing List A match for Tasmania Tigers in the Ford Ranger One Day Cup. His chances of getting roped in as a wicketkeeper were less due to the presence of Tim Paine.

Early career

He moved to Victoria in the 2008-09 season and scored his maiden first-class century. He made a significant contribution to Victoria’s 2009-10 Sheffield Shield finals against Queensland by scoring a huge 96 runs. It was in the year 2015, where he scored his highest ever score in first-class cricket by smashing 152 runs for Victoria. Seeing his success in the domestic limited-overs circuit, he was roped in the national side in October 2011.

His maiden T20I came against South Africa in 2011, and in 2012, he got his international breakthrough against India in Sydney. He scored 72 runs from 43 balls and bagged the player of the match award. Seeing his specialization in the T20 format, he also received a call-up in the ODI squad in the 2011-12 Commonwealth Bank Series. He received the man of the match award on debut itself after scoring 67 of 69 balls against India at MCG.

Test debut and subsequent success

An explosive innings at the top from Australia’s newest captain Matthew Wade! #AUSvIND pic.twitter.com/edWNYMsA9b

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) December 7, 2020

Wade marked his Test debut against West Indies and scored his maiden ton. He performed well enough to retain his place for the subsequent tours but lost his place to Brad Haddin from the 2013 Ashes series. He kept on being Australia’s preferred pick as the wicketkeeper in ODI and T20I series but his Test spot was never stable. He was left out of the 2015 WC squad ahead of Haddin. It was only in 2019 when he got added to Australia’s squad for WC 2019.

He was added to replace Khawaja, who got ruled out of the high profile event due to a hamstring injury. In between, Wade chose to return to his home state of Tasmania in the 2017-18 season for family reasons. Midway through 2018-19, he was named as skipper of the Tasmanian team, and Hurricanes as George Bailey was removed from the spot to let him focus more on his batting. In December 2020, Wade led the Australia team in a T20I against India after Aaron Finch was ruled out due to an injury. After making a stunning comeback in Australia’s Test squad in the last Ashes series, Wade seems set for a long stint this time around.