Matthew Wade

It has been a career of reinvention for Matthew Wade, who went from Test wicketkeeper to specialist middle-order batter to T20I World Cup-winning wicketkeeper-finisher, via a prolific run in domestic cricket when it appeared his international days were over.

Wade was a talented junior footballer, but at 170cm decided he was too short to make a career out of it and pursued cricket instead. It wasn't plain sailing: that he played any international cricket at all is a credit to his mental toughness - at 16, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and required two cycles of chemotherapy to defeat the illness.

He moved from Hobart to Melbourne when he realised he would be stuck behind Tim Paine in the Tasmania wicketkeeping queue. Victoria gave him a chance and he grabbed it, making 83 and taking six catches on his first-class debut. Wade would later become a Sheffield Shield-winning captain for Victoria, leading them to two titles in their hat-trick of wins between 2015 and 2017.

Though he showed promise early in his Test career, including two hundreds in his first ten Tests, there was too much competition for the wicketkeeping spot. When his childhood friend Paine was handed the job for the 2017-18 Ashes, it looked like Wade had missed the bus, but he moved back to Tasmania, dominated state cricket for two seasons, and earned a spot for the 2019 series against England - in which he scored two centuries. That was followed by a return to the Australia white-ball set-ups.

A brief, successful, stint as T20I opener in David Warner's absence, on the back of dominant BBL seasons as an opener with Hobart Hurricanes, made Wade Australia's first-choice T20I wicketkeeper in 2020-21, and he also captained the T20I team in two series while Aaron Finch was out. He was vice-captain for the 2021 T20 World Cup, and recast as a finisher. And it was in that role that he delivered arguably the most important innings of the T20 World Cup, in the semi-final against Pakistan to get Australia home, after which they went on to take the title.