Australia batsman Nic Maddinson made a remarkable return to Test cricket on Friday after recovering from Testicular cancer, although his first innings for his country in almost a decade ended in a duck.
The 34-year-old was a surprise choice to open the batting against hosts South Africa on the first day of the opening Test at Kingsmead after Australia won the toss and elected to bat.
Maddinson faced 33 balls without scoring and looked uneasy against a barrage of fast bowling before chopping a delivery from Marco Jansen onto his stumps.
He had joined the squad only last week as an injury replacement and was named in the team 30 minutes before the start, replacing the injured Cameron Green.
His recall came despite an 18-month absence from first-class cricket after he underwent a debilitating nine-week course of chemotherapy last year.
"I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Cricket was the last thing I wanted to think about," he told the Sydney Morning Herald last year.
Before the cancer diagnosis, he had averaged 52.37 over six years of domestic Sheffield Shield competition and this was one of the reasons he received a call-up to the South Africa tour.
"From 2018 to 2024, he was one of the leading players in Shield cricket," Australia coach Andrew McDonald explained last week. “Anyone that's been on the radar or there or thereabouts, they don't drop off automatically. We feel like he's got some good craft against spin and quality pace. He's been at this level before.”
Maddinson won the last of his three Test caps in December 2016, having also been a surprise inclusion after Australia’s defeat by South Africa in the second Test in Hobart. He failed to establish himself in the side, however, scoring 27 runs in four innings against South Africa and Pakistan.
Since his recovery, Maddinson, whose career first-class average is 37, hit a century for New South Wales in Australia’s One-Day Cup last month.
His selection, nevertheless, was heavily criticised by former Australia opener Matthew Hayden, who said on a podcast: "Where we are at is that we are promoting the greaTest pile of mediocrity that we've seen in a generation of cricket." Hayden argued that Australia should be selecting players with stronger first-class records rather than relying on batters with modest averages.
"If we expect that a bloke averaging 35 is going to average 55 in Test match cricket, (the selectors) are dreaming and, in my opinion, disrespecting first-class cricket.”
Maddinson has not publicly responded to Hayden’s criticism, but said after his first net session following remission that his recovery had given him a new sense of freedom at the crease. “For the first time I could bat without a care in the world,” he said.