Mathew Stuart Sinclair (born 9 November 1975) is an Australian-born New Zealand

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

er. He is a right-handed middle order batsman who has also opened the innings. He holds the equal world record for the highest Test score (214) by a number three batsman on debut when he opened his international career against

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Great ...

in the 1999 Boxing Day Test.

Personal life

Born in

Katherine Katherine, also spelled Catherine, and other variations are feminine names. They are popular in Christian countries because of their derivation from the name of one of the first Christian saints, Catherine of Alexandria. In the early Christ ...

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Au ...

, Australia, Sinclair moved to New Zealand with his mother after the death of his father in an accident when Mathew was only five years old.

Domestic career

A right-handed middle-order batsman occasionally used as an opener, he played for Central Districts from the 1995–96 season, and in a period when the New Zealand cricket authorities were actively developing their infrastructure with the aim of raising the standards of the

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

team, he played for both Academy and A teams before making his

Test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...

debut. When batting for Central Districts against

Northern Districts The Northern Districts men's cricket team are one of six New Zealand first-class cricket teams that make up New Zealand Cricket. They are based in the northern half of the North Island of New Zealand (excluding Auckland). They compete in the ...

in 1997, he was left not out on 99 when Grant Bradburn bowled a wide down the legside that beat the wicketkeeper and went for four runs ending the game. The Central Districts team felt that this was very unsporting of Grant Bradburn, who was subsequently fined $100 for the incident.

International career

He scored 214 on his debut, against West Indies at Wellington in 1999, and followed that with 204 not out against Pakistan in the following summer. But despite this most promising of starts, Sinclair struggled to gain a permanent place in both the Test and one-day sides after disappointing scores. As a result, he was intermittently featured in the international squad, most recently being the

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World Cup ...

against the

Eden Park Eden Park is New Zealand's largest sports stadium, with a capacity of 50,000. Located in central Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, it is three kilometres southwest of the Auckland CBD, CBD, on the boundary between the suburbs of Mount E ...

in January 2009. An injury to

Michael Papps Michael Hugh William Papps (born 2 July 1979) is a former New Zealand cricketer. In October 2016, he became the first player to score 10,000 runs in the Plunket Shield. In April 2018, he announced his retirement from the game. Domestic caree ...

in 2004–05 saw him called into the tour of Bangladesh as a 'makeshift' opener. His preferred position in the top of the middle-order was not available at the time. He did enough on that tour to gain selection for the tour to Australia where he had mixed results in the Tests, but not enough to maintain his spot when the Australians crossed the Tasman later that summer. His form in the ODIs in Australia was sufficient to retain his place for the return series, but he lost his place after averaging 15 in the first three matches.

Retirement

In July 2013 he announced his retirement from all cricket. At 37, after 18 seasons in the Central Districts side he is the team's all-time highest run-scorer, with more than 20,000 runs across all formats and remained a solid performer to the last, averaging over 40 in 2012–13. Sinclair found the transition from a cricketer to working outside of cricket very difficult. He worked in a sports shop for eight months before being made redundant. He now works as a real estate agent. In 2020, he was continuing to play club cricket in Napier.

References

External links

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Mathew Sinclair's Official Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinclair, Mathew 1975 births Central Districts cricketers Living people New Zealand cricketers New Zealand One Day International cricketers New Zealand Test cricketers Cricketers who made a century on Test debut Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup New Zealand Twenty20 International cricketers People educated at Palmerston North Boys' High School Australian emigrants to New Zealand Cricketers from the Northern Territory Sportsmen from the Northern Territory North Island cricketers