For most of this summer, let alone the Big Bash League, Matthew Wade has been

watching things happen. He watched his Test spot go to Tim Paine, who was standing
next to him at first slip in a Sheffield Shield match at the time. He watched Paine
and Alex Carey also go past him in the white-ball international pecking order, with
call-ups in the ODIs and T20Is.

Most frequently of all, and from the non-striker's end, he watched D'Arcy Short lay
waste to most of the BBL, the tournament's leading scorer, biggest six-hitter and
latest IPL acquisition. Short's destructive power earned him an Australia call-up
and so deprived Hobart Hurricanes of his services for the finals. This was widely
thought to be a terminal blow to George Bailey's team, given how Short had to that
point doubled the runs tallies of his team-mates. By their coach Gary Kirsten's
reckoning, "everything was against us". It was to be Wade who turned the tide.

Certainly the Scorchers' captain Adam Voges must have thought so when he sent the
Hurricanes in to bat at the new Perth Stadium, even though the two previous winners
of games here - England on Sunday and the Scorchers' women earlier on Thursday -
had both batted first. Scorchers have habitually been a bowl first, knock 'em over
and run 'em down team, only ever losing six games batting second in seven
tournaments. Mitchell Johnson, too, has got used to delivering the first over.
Wade all but concedes international days over

Matthew Wade has admitted speculation over his Australian team place weighed him
down earlier in the summer, and has all but conceded his international days are
over after dropping out of the national side in all three formats. After struggling
with the bat for Tasmania in the Sheffield Shield, Wade was dropped for his state
teammate Tim Paine in the Ashes series, and has since fallen behind not only Paine
but also Alex Carey in the short forms.

"Once it was all over I kind of relaxed and chilled out, and my performances
probably got better from that," Wade said after his key innings in Hobart
Hurricanes' upset of Perth Scorchers. "I didn't feel like it was taking a toll at
the time but once it was done I felt a lot more relaxed, a lot calmer, disappointed
I didn't get picked in the one dayers but that's just what it is, and my
international career's probably a long way away from coming back.

"But I'm comfortable with that, I got an opportunity to play a lot for Australia
and I'm thankful I did get that opportunity, now it's just about enjoying my
cricket for the next three, four, five years hopefully. When you get dropped from
all formats in summer, I'd be surprised if they go back to me. Alex Carey's playing
good cricket, I assume he'll be the next option for Australia in short format but
I'm comfortable with that, I understand that, it's a reality for me."

But when Wade took guard with the returning Paine alongside him, he saw an
unexpected face at the top of his mark: Mitchell Marsh. Why the Scorchers chose to
depart from their usual bowling pattern will doubtless be a question mulled over
for some time out west, because Marsh bowled a loosener, and Wade was able to get
away to a rapid start that then gave him confidence to take on Johnson himself.
Johnson, for his part, started fast and accurately, striking Paine a blow on the
helmet that forced its replacement. However Wade hammered his first ball from
Johnson - the very next ball - to the cover-point boundary off the back foot, and
thereafter had the upper hand over his former Test team-mate.

In the fourth over, Johnson tried pitching up to Wade and was despatched down the
ground. He then erred straighter and fuller, allowing a pair of flicks that eluded
short fine leg and drew another two boundaries. Johnson took his cap from the
umpire after the over cost 13, and was involved in a verbal exchange with Wade that
only served to further emphasise how much the sometime Australian gloveman was in
his element. The venue suited him too. The new Perth Stadium, with its long square
boundaries and bowl design, was designed primarily for Australian football, and
Wade goes about his business with the combativeness of an AFL tagger. "It's
unavoidable I think," Wade said later. "It's going to happen, just depends how much
it happens."

The difference here, of course, was that Wade had needed to take up the role more
akin to that of a centre-man, winning possession of the contest from the start in
Short's fashion. That he did so reflected a combination of confidence that had
grown slowly through the tournament, and a realisation that this was a match the
Hurricanes had to go out and win - the Scorchers' formidable record this season and
over the past seven years guaranteed they would not simply hand it over. Kirsten
had recognised this; Wade acted on it.

"Gary spoke about being really aggressive and if we sit back against Perth they
tend to take the momentum and it's hard to get back into the game," Wade said
afterwards. "So we had a really conscious effort to take the momentum to them, take
our energy out there straight away and we managed to do that from ball one with the
bat and with the ball. It was a clinical performance from the boys.

"I certainly didn't expect Mitch [Marsh] to bowl the first over so they took a
risk. He could have swung one back down the line and knocked my pegs out first
ball, you never know. We managed to get away a little bit in that over, which was
nice, but it was a calculated risk from them and it did surprise us.
Matthew Wade cuts one Getty Images

"I felt like I've been hitting the ball well through the whole tournament, it was
nice to get away and then consolidate and push deeper into the innings. I'm just
really confident with the depth of our batting, it's nice to bat at the top of the
order and know we've got so much depth in our batting, guys are hitting the ball
really well throughout the whole lineup, so it gives you confidence to watch the
ball and play the way you play."

Once the Powerplay was up, the Scorchers would typically have called upon Ashton
Agar's left-arm spin to bottle things up through the middle of the innings, a role
he has grown impressively into after the departure of Michael Beer several seasons
ago. But here was a contrast between the "contingencies" planned for by Hurricanes
and Scorchers - the hosts not choosing a spin bowler at all while the visitors
dropped Cameron Boyce but retained Clive Rose. The Scorchers' other prime spin
option was James Muirhead, a legspinner capable of great deliveries but also poor
ones. The way Wade explained it, even a medium night for Muirhead might have
changed up the rhythm of the game a bit more than Marsh - who ultimately went for
an unsightly 53 runs - Tim Bresnan or Matthew Kelly.

"Once you got the rhythm of the wicket it certainly helped that they couldn't go to
a spinner and really have pace off the ball," Wade said. "From a batter's point of
view it probably helped not to have a spinner, because once you got the rhythm of
the wicket it was kind of the same type of speeds coming out of the hand. It was
probably handy for us."

The significance of Wade's innings could be measured in the noise of the 52,960
spectators, most clad in Scorchers' orange, who roared for Paine's early dismissal
but were then mostly cowed into silence by the succession of percussive shots
emanating from the sometime Victorian's bat. As Kirsten rightly pointed out, the
Hurricanes' middle order had capitalised on Short's strong early work on numerous
occasions this tournament, but they needed someone to point the way.

"Today we wanted to come out and play a really aggressive, courageous game of
cricket. Everything was against us, we were the underdogs, we weren't expected to
win, and it requires individuals to do it," Kirsten said. "That's why I think
Wade's knock really set he tone for us. Ben McDermott played brilliantly at the
end, but we kind of know when we get into those positions, we've done it all in the
BBL, we know we can fire in there. But to get us on the road, get us going and get
into the contest was important and he did that very well.

"We arrived here and got a sense we were making up the numbers and that it was
going to be the Perth Scorchers' show. We've had some really good games this Big
Bash where we've played a style of cricket that's made people stand up, and today I
think we went to another level. The guys got up really early for the battle, I
think Wade's innings was very important for us to set the tone, and we've been a
great batting unit throughout the BBL, so we knew when we had a good start like
that we'd be on our way.

"Everyone down the order has done something... it's a great loss to lose the
leading run scorer [Short] in the BBL, but what I have learned about this is you
have to have contingency around that. We've gone with seven front-line batsmen
because we've felt it gives us some depth to our batting, and it worked tonight."