Luke Ronchi

Luke Ronchi has the rare distinction of having represented both New Zealand, his country of birth, and Australia.

His first international incarnation came for Australia in the West Indies in 2008 when he stood in creditably for the injured Brad Haddin in four ODIs and a T20: his glovework was brilliant and in St Kitts in the last of those ODIs he clubbed a 22-ball half-century. But his form fell away the following domestic summer and he added only two more T20 internationals to his tally for Australia.

For a while after, Ronchi was there and thereabouts in state cricket for Western Australia, for whom he had played for about a decade at that point, having established himself as a solid keeper and clean striker of the ball. In 2007 he made a 56-ball hundred for them, then the fastest in Australian domestic one-day history. Also that season, in a first-class game against Queensland, he lashed a belligerent 51-ball hundred where the second fifty came off 11 balls.

Ronchi was overtaken around the turn of the decade by other keepers, among them Tim Paine and Matthew Wade, in the queue to succeed Haddin, and at the end of 2011-12, he decided to try his luck in New Zealand, securing a contract with Wellington. Once he qualified for national representation, he earned a call-up to the ODI side in 2013, and debuted against England in an ODI in May, becoming the first man since Kepler Wessels nearly 20 years earlier to represent two ICC Full-Member nations.

As New Zealand rode an ODI wave that eventually culminated in defeat in the final of the 2015 World Cup, Ronchi made a decent case for himself as a lower-order batter. He made 79 and 99 from No. 7 in back-to-back defeats against South Africa in Mount Maunganui in 2014, and smashed 170 not out off 99 balls in a big win against Sri Lanka in Dunedin early in 2015.

In May that year, seven years into his international career, Ronchi played his first Test, against England in Leeds, making 88 and 31 in a win in Headingley. He played three more Tests, all in India in 2016 (he made 80 in Kanpur), two T20 World Cups and two Champions Trophies before calling time on his international career in June 2017.