Calcutta/Sydney: Yuvraj Singh, who is undergoing treatment for lung cancer, has another inspiration to get back to full-fitness. Yuvraj has publicly said that reading Lance Armstrong’s book has driven him to make a swift return.

Now, he can take inspiration form Australian wicketkeeper Matthew Wade’s story. The 30-year-old Yuvraj, who is currently in the United States undergoing chemotherapy for a cancerous tumour between the two lungs, found out about his disease last year.

Wade was all of 16 when he discovered that he had testicular cancer, that too by chance after he got hit on the groin during a football game.

He was belted in the groin during a game of state football. Then, while he was away for a school camp, he realised something wasn’t right.

‘‘I went in and got it checked and the doctor basically said if I hadn’t been hit in the testicle, maybe I would never have known the tumour was there, so I was pretty lucky I got hit in the nuts and got it checked,’’ Wade was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald.

‘‘It was just a surreal sort of thing. It didn’t hit home until I sat there and they told me basically that I was going to go through chemotherapy and lose my hair and all that sort of stuff. As a young bloke at 16, I think that’s when it hit home that this was pretty serious. Before that I didn’t really know, I just thought I’d have an operation and it would be taken care of. Then, sitting down and talking about it, I realised how serious it was, and I was pretty lucky to get through it.’’

No one who has played with or against Australia’s new one-day wicket-keeper doubts that he is tough. “I still tried to train between cycles [of chemotherapy], but it was too hard,” said Wade.

He needed those qualities to get through two cycles of cancer treatment, which knocked him around in ways he hadn’t expected. The experience also changed his outlook at a time when Wade — a tough in-and-under midfielder whose father, Scott Wade, played 12 games for Hawthorn in the 1980s — was nearing AFL draft age.

‘‘For a couple of years, I really just sat back and enjoyed the little things. I wasn’t as driven for a period,’’ Wade said. He began a plumbing apprenticeship, and kept playing both sports — VFL for Tasmania and first-grade cricket in Hobart — without thinking he would reach the top level in either.