Matthew Wade of Australia looks on during a Australia Net Session ahead of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup final match between New Zealand and Australia at the ICC Academy on November 13, 2021 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Australia's limited-overs skipper Aaron Finch feels there is a potential for Matthew Wade to come higher up in the order as early as in the ICC T20 World Cup final against New Zealand later on Sunday in order to fully realise his batting abilities.
Wade and Marcus Stoinis came together when the chips were down against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup semifinal in Dubai on November 11, with the former cashing in on a dropped catch by Hasan Ali to smash three sixes off three deliveries to guide Australia into the final for the second time in the history of the tournament.
Wade finally ended up scoring an unbeaten 41 off just 17 deliveries to surpass Pakistan's score of 176 with an over to spare.
Asked about Wade's heroics in the semifinal and if there were plans to push him up the order to "fully realise his batting abilities in the final showdown", Finch said, "Yeah, potentially, we talked about it the other day. The possibility of Matt (Wade) going in a little bit further up the order especially with Shad (Pakistan leg-spinner Shadab Khan), still having a couple overs to go, but we decided to hold him back towards the end and it paid off there.
"He's (Wade) someone who is really versatile in our order. We've seen him open the batting, bat at three, and now he's down at seven. He provides a huge amount of flexibility for our team," said Finch ahead of the World Cup final.
Finch said that the team was really disappointed following the loss to England in the 'Super 12' stage and he gave the boys a couple of days' off to regroup for the next league game against Bangladesh.
"Yeah, really disappointed obviously. We didn't put in our best performance. But to have a couple of days off and to have the guys regroup on what had been I suppose a really gruelling first couple of weeks of the tournament where we turned up, had some quarantine and then trained really hard in the lead-in to the tournament.
"So to have the ability to mentally and physically freshen up for a couple of days was important, but what we did talk about touring that time was staying really committed to being aggressive. We felt as though in that game (against England) we were probably just a little bit timid and got outplayed in the powerplay by Woakes in particular, who got England off to a good start. It was just about staying really aggressive.
"We understand in this format of the game that when you're up against a great opposition that they don't always allow you big opportunities to get into the game, and whether it's bat or ball, you have to really find a small edge at some point and try and drive that advantage home. I think every team plays it very similar, so we just reiterated that's how we wanted to go about it and play that way," added Finch.
