Matthew Wade 3.0: ‘It feels like I’m starting my international career again’

Dropped from the Test side in 2017, Mathew Wade ‘knocked the door down’ by focusing solely on batting and piling on the runs. Now, he says, “every game that I play is one I didn’t think I would get”.

• Tim Paine exclusive: Warner v The Barmy Army
• Revealed: The science behind Smith’s technique
• Archer laughs off Langer’s Ashes scepticism
• MCC ignores Punter’s plea for neutral umpires

Matthew Wade’s first Ashes century was born out of the gloom and anger of what he thought could have been the end of his international career.

When Wade was cast aside in 2017, dropped from the Test team for a second time he decided runs, and loads of them, was his only chance at a way back.

As a result of that the 31-year-old is now living the dream in his third Test incarnation, a centurion in the first Test win at Edgbaston and set to walk on to Lord’s under a baggy green.

Stream over 50 sports live & anytime on your TV or favourite device with KAYO SPORTS. The biggest Aussie sports and the best from overseas. Just $25/month. No lock-in contract. Get your 14 day free trial >

It’s an opportunity he thought he might never get, and one he knows will probably never happen again.

Matthew Wade returned to Test cricket with a second innings ton in victory at Edgbaston.

So in the crowd will be his now eight-week-old daughter Goldie, who Wade said goodbye to in June, just four days after she was born, her sister Winter, his wife, Julia, his parents and his sister.

They’ll watch a man, and a batsman, so comfortable in his skin that another bold showing is more likely than not.

THE EYES HAVE IT: Langer says Warner’s Ashes fire has returned

LORD’S OF THE MANOR: The Australians who ruled in London

“It feels like I am starting my international career again,” Wade said while sitting on a bench in the member’s pavilion at the most famous cricket ground in the world.

Wade last wore the Baggy Green, alongside Steve Smith and David Warner in Chittagong in 2017.

“Now I am in the mindset that every game that I get is one I didn’t think I would get, so I’m actually enjoying the whole experience.

“I am really comfortable with my life. It takes a long time to get comfortable, and I am 31, and I’m as happy as I have ever been.

“Through your 20s, you are always trying to build something, whether that’s build a family, get a house, you are always trying to get something more. I am at a stage now where I am not trying to get anything more.

Wade ‘knocked down the door’ on a Test return by weight of runs for Tasmania.

“I am just comfortable and it’s reflected in my cricket.”

Wade’s second innings hundred in Edgbaston, which pushed Australia in to an unbeatable position, got lost in the tsunami of praise for Steve Smith’s second century of the match.

Eight years ago, when Wade made his Test debut, that would have irked him.

He said he was just a “battling international cricketer” through his first 22 Tests, always “playing for my spot” and needing every single pat on the back he could get.

As wicketkeeper batsman, Wade felt always under pressure throughout a Test match.

But since he decided to focus on becoming a batsman after being dropped for the 2017/18 Ashes in Australia, which led him to drop the wicket keeping gloves last summer, he doesn’t feel that pressure.

“I feel stronger mentally than what I was, even the last crack I had at Test cricket. Dropping the gloves off, mentally it has freed me up,” he said.

“The game doesn’t feel anywhere near as long. I always felt pressure when I was keeping, then going in to bat, I always felt under pressure. I’d never really cracked it as an international cricketer, I was under pressure every game I played and I felt that.

Hanging up the gloves and reinventing himself as a pure specialist batsman has revived Wade’s Test career.

“The last Test, I enjoyed it, I relaxed with the bat, and I can trust myself more these days.”

He’s a different presence in the dressing room too, and his teammates, most of whom he has played with or against for over a decade, have noticed.

Wade even felt the love from the cricket-watching public, who wanted the one man who was making shed loads of runs at domestic level to get the crack he deserved in a Test middle-order full of plenty who didn’t.

“I feel like I have the respect of the playing group, and players around the country, which is a nice feeling,’ he said

“I think they probably look at me as a different player, and look at my first stint as another person, as I do. I’m most definitely a different person.

“Then publicly, I think the public understand I deserved a crack after the amount of runs I scored. I felt it when I got over here, that I’d probably won a few people over, even players over.”

Wade is a well liked member of the current squad, and content with is own game.

It took guts for Wade to make such drastic changes, which included taking up a carpentry apprenticeship when he thought his international dreams were done.

“But I started to enjoy going to training again. I lost that enjoyment, international cricket got me in a bit of a grind,” he said.

“Getting on the tools then going to training, some banter with the boys, I was doing it three days a week instead of seven. And it certainly made me find a bit more love for the game again.”

It’s a love that’s hard to hide at Lord’s, where Wade mark III could prove himself the best Ashes selection since Smith was slotted in as a leg-spinning batsman in 2010.

LISTEN UP: Lord’s Test preview with Peter Lalor

The Australian’s chief cricket writer calls in from London with all the latest on Australia’s bid to go 2-0 up in the series.

Stream above now or search ‘Cricket Unfiltered’ on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from, and subscribe today to never miss an episode!

“I’m confident that if I play the way I have been playing over the past 18 months, my game is good enough to succeed,” he said.

“If it doesn’t, I’m comfortable with that. And I think it’s a really underrated thing to be comfortable with your own game.

“I won’t be chasing other things, I’ll be doing things my way.”