Rising in the Ashes: The making of Jake Weatherald, Australia’s newest opening batter [Exclusive]

It’s not wrong to term Jake Weatherald an accidental Test cricketer. By no means is it to suggest that his inclusion in Australia’s squad for the ongoing Ashes series was out of chance. But it was something that not many – including the man himself, perhaps – would have foreseen even a year ago.

Think Jake Weatherald and the first visual of him that is likely to pop up in mind is the left-handed dasher in the Adelaide Strikers gear who walloped 115 in the final of the Big Bash League (BBL) in February 2018. It was a knock that not only gave the Strikers their only men’s BBL title to date, but also cast himself as a promising maverick who could take white ball cricket by storm.

Years went by and the form of the Darwin-born Weatherald, who shifted base to South Australia to pursue cricketing opportunities, fluctuated a lot like his batting number. It’s an indicator of how gifted he always was that a fixed batting number wasn’t to be associated with him, often sliding into the middle-order for the Strikers.

Consistent returns – or the lack thereof – were a factor. One that kept him nowhere near the radar of the Australian selectors. His red ball returns, in the meantime, were more decent than wow. Every time Australia needed a partner for David Warner – and eventually a successor for him – the names of Marcus Harris, Matt Renshaw and Cameron Bancroft would always come up. Never Weatherald.

And yet, here he is, as Baggy Green number 473, having made his Test debut at the wise age of 31 – ironically as the second youngest member of the Australian XI that beat England in two days in Perth to take a 1-0 lead in the series. And that, after a 2023-24 Sheffield Shield season that saw him play a solitary game.

The following season saw Weatherald top the Shield charts though with 906 runs at an average of 50.33 at the top of the order for Tasmania, where he switched to ahead of the 2023-24 summer. Massive hundreds at brisk pace, often in the challenging conditions that Hobart’s Bellerive Oval had to offer, meant that he threw himself as a wildcard option against all odds.

So, what changed?

We ask Tom Scollay, a former cricketer hailing from Alice Springs but is now based out of Perth, and runs the hugely popular Cricket Mentoring coaching programme.

While most of his focus is on the grassroots, Scollay has been a mentor for a number of BBL and domestic cricket regulars including Jono Merlo, Peter Hatzoglou, Jack Edwards and now capped Australian players Josh Philippe, Nathan McSweeney and more lately, Weatherald.

Introduced to Weatherald by former Australian Test opener Chris Rogers – who too, had a memorable late surge as an international player in his 30s – it all began with a few video sessions during the COVID-19 imposed lockdown period. Scollay focused on mindset and high performance, with the aforementioned set of players coming together for discussions that lasted an hour and a bit.

Soon enough, Weatherald was keen to catch up with Scollay and work on certain specifics.

“Chris got his job with Victoria and he could no longer mentor and work with Jake in such a capacity. So Jake reached out to me and just asked for some help and to have a chat,” Scollay tells Sportskeeda in an exclusive chat. “And then he said, maybe three or four Big Bashes ago, towards the end of November 2022 and he said, ‘oh my dad’s over there (in Perth). I want to come and see him and I want to do some training with you.’ So he came over and we did three intensive days in person where we spoke a lot of technique, a lot of tactics. We did a lot of spin work and he was prepping for Big Bash cricket.

Scollay has always been someone that Weatherald had fallen back to, even if they did not touch base on a very regular basis.

“It’s just grown from there,” says Scollay. “Honestly, we haven’t worked consistently together every month since then. It’s sort of dipped in and out a bit. He touches base with me when he feels like he needs something or he’s got some thoughts on his mind and he wants another opinion. But often when his game’s going really well, as it has done for the last 12 months, he’s in a really good zone. He’s trusting himself, he’s not needing me as much.”

But when required, camps with Scollay and Cricket Mentoring played a big part in shaping Weatherald’s game. As was the case earlier this year, shortly after a hugely successful Shield campaign.

“Earlier this year, we did a fair bit together. He came to India with me in April for a seven-day camp. We spoke a lot about playing spin there and he had his mind on the Sri Lanka A series. He invested a week of time, energy and money in India to just be ready for that A series to hopefully springboard himself into the Ashes. And he’s basically foregone any white ball cricket over the last few months, really, because he just doesn’t want any distractions from being ready for the Ashes and giving himself the best chance of getting picked and then playing and performing in the Ashes. So yeah, it’s been on and off. We’ve had a great relationship and I’m just here whenever he needs me, really,” said Scollay.

The work that Scollay put in with Weatherald clearly had its effect. While Weatherald wasn’t picked in the Australia A team for the tour of India in September, chief selector George Bailey did make it clear that the squad picked for that tour had no bearing on Ashes selections with the first three rounds of the Shield bound to take precedence.

Jake Weatherald’s transformation to a bankable red ball player has been a remarkable one.

Prior to that though, Weatherald opened for Australia A against the touring Sri Lankans in July. He got two innings in Darwin and returned scores of 54 and 183, firmly shoring up his chances ahead of a massive summer at a time when Sam Konstas’ technical chinks were exposed in the Caribbean.

Eight-hour training and inconsistencies – Jake Weatherald and the art of discovering himself

Scollay dubs Weatherald as a batter who has “always had this high ceiling in terms of his ability”. It’s no surprise that he always took a keen interest in the latter’s growth through the pathways, given that they both hail from the Northern Territory.

“I had always observed him from afar, because I grew up in the Northern Territory and so did Jake. I am seven or eight years older, so I had left the Northern Territory before he’d even got into the pathway or the system. So we never really crossed paths. But as I started to hear about this kid out of the NT playing for South Australia, I started to pay attention from afar early in his career. He was always a great run maker. When I first started working with him, I was really impressed and intrigued by how deep he thought about the game and he also thought about performance,” says Scollay.

Technical changes were rung in immediately as the two linked up, with Scollay focusing on getting him to play a lot closer to his body and improve his front foot alignment.

“When we first worked together in person physically, I spoke a bit to him about his positioning. I thought his front foot was a bit leg-side and he was playing away (from the body). He likes to play square the wicket, but he wasn’t getting his foot even to middle stump a lot of the time. I would throw to him, his front foot would go down leg stump and he’d play fourth stump balls, fending it a bit. I think there were a few little technical things that I highlighted five or so years ago when we first started working together.

“I showed him some footage of him and I showed him some footage of others and it was some stuff he hadn’t really thought about before or been taught before. So that was that when we first started. But to me, when we like going back before that, it was really how deep he thought about the game. And to me, it was just all about him becoming consistent, which he has done in recent times,” says Scollay.

That Weatherald was a deep thinker of the game also swelled to a point of obsession in his quest for perfection. In a recent appearance on The Grade Cricketer podcast, the left-hander spoke about taking inspiration from Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who trained eight hours a day. He eventually imbibed the same philosophy with his own guitar and eventually, the cricket bat.

It didn’t necessarily bring results though and with time, Weatherald has learned to work out how much training was too much training.

“Early on in my relationship with Jake, I always thought, wow, he’s a bit different. He’s very committed. He’s very sort of determined and willing to try new things and different things and do whatever it takes. But he then obviously went through a bit of mental health, a bit of burnout, a bit of uncertainty about who he was as a person. So I think it all has come back to his mindset and getting his mind right. And once he’s been able to get a bit older, a bit maturer, a bit more confident in who he is as a person off the field, I think that’s all helped him bring consistency to his game on the field,” says Scollay.

One can draw an interesting parallel with Marnus Labuschagne, known to face thousands of balls in the nets before opting against doing so in recent times having found himself dropped from the Australian XI over lack of runs. While Scollay believes that training volume is a personal decision, he reckons that players tend to trust their game a lot more as they get older.

“Jake has gone through a similar thing where he’s tried to hit lots and lots and lots of balls and he is a hard trainer. He is someone who trains really hard and he likes to tick all the boxes. He likes to do what we talk about as the daily vitamins where he’s doing his underarms and his basic technique work, the foundations of his technique. And then he also likes to make sure he’s getting his spin work done so that when he faces spin, he feels he can get in good positions there. He likes to make sure he’s got all his scoring options against pace sorted and his decision making sorted. So he likes to tick all the boxes, but he certainly doesn’t train eight hours a day like he did. He did that for a little while, but not very long,” says Scollay.

From training eight hours a day, Weatherald soon began to “train with purpose”.

“When we were in India in April, he very rarely faced multiple bowlers at once. More often than not, he wanted to face just one bowler and he wanted to go through his routine and practice, his processes in between balls against one bowler and have a contest with one bowler and problem solve and work things out against just one bowler at a time. And so that’s what he really prioritizes at the moment. And I think he’s in a really good place where he’s training when he needs to train, but he’s not training for the sake of training and then feel like he’s getting better. He’s really saving a lot of his energy for the middle, which is what Marnus seems to be doing. And it’s obviously working,” says Scollay.

Quite clearly, it is. Yet, there was a major setback along this route of discovering what worked best for him.

Mental health struggles and loving the game again

Struggles with mental health forced Weatherald to step away from the game on more than one instance. At a crossroads with where his cricket career was headed, this bumpy obstacle seemed to unsettle his journey with the cricket bat and could have so easily kept higher honors at bay for good.

Yet, like most tough personalities, Weatherald bounced back. He needed help and he sought the same after being egged on by his wife Rachel, who Scollay believes has played a massive part in getting Weatherald to where he is today. A strong relationship with Dr. John Novak, a renowned sports psychologist in Australia, was another instrumental factor in Weatherald getting back to loving the sport he has spent his whole life playing.

And so much of it comes down to that after all – the very reason one picks up a cricket ball or bat. The sheer love of the game. It was trying to find simple happiness in the sport for what it was that brought Weatherald back on track.

“Oh, mate, I can’t agree with that more,” expresses Scollay. “That’s one of the biggest things I preach to players, especially those who are out of form or aren’t doing well. I think so many people think ‘oh, when I do well, I’ll enjoy it again.’ But I think, I think Jake is a great example of ‘let’s find some joy in the game.’ Let’s enjoy the challenge. Let’s enjoy the uncertainty of the game. Let’s enjoy the mateship. Let’s enjoy cricket for what it is. And then the results take care of themselves.

“But I think so many people say ‘when I do well, I’ll enjoy it.’ But I think Jake has really tried to find a way to enjoy his cricket again and that has definitely led to him doing well.”

Soon enough, it started reflecting in his returns as the 2024-25 Sheffield Shield season would show. Once Weatherald was in, he made his good days great ones, as scores of 186 against Queensland and 145 against New South Wales showed. Switching to Tasmania saw him rub shoulders with head coach Jeff Vaughan and the results are a clear indicator of Weatherald finding his happy place.

“I think Tasmania definitely deserves credit. But what I think the most important thing is Jake has worked out what his best cricket looks like. He’s worked out how to approach it from a technical point of view. He’s worked out how to approach it from a tactical point of view. And most importantly, he’s worked out how to approach it from a mental point of view,” says Scollay.

Scollay also credits Weatherald for emphasizing on red ball cricket and putting in the hard yards at a time when he could have just as comfortably pivoted towards a career as a T20 freelancer. This, at a time when he found himself out of the Tasmania XI in his first year with the team and blitzed a 32-ball unbeaten 80 elsewhere for the Strikers against a Hobart Hurricanes attack featuring Riley Meredith, Nathan Ellis and Chris Jordan.

“That’s been a real determination of his, to not chase franchise cricket. Because a couple of years ago when he was out of the Tasmanian team and not playing Shield cricket, he could have on the back of the previous year doing well in Big Bash, easily gone, ‘I’ll stuff this, I’m going to chase franchise cricket, make some money, travel around.’ But he stayed true to the game and to himself and he really wanted to play red ball cricket and Test cricket for Australia. And so he stuck with his guns. He believed he was good enough despite not being in the Tasmanian team at the time. And he doubled down on his red ball and he really went to work,” says Scollay.

Scollay was in attendance at Perth Stadium when Weatherald received his Baggy Green from David Warner. A manic two-day Test saw the southpaw bagged a two-ball duck in his first dig as he was nearly floored by a rapid Jofra Archer delivery, before playing his part in setting the tone for Australia’s successful chase of 205.

Having received his cap from David Warner (R), Weatherald will look to make that opening spot his own.

A wide grin embraced his face when he scored his first Test runs and having finally got here, the world is his oyster. Not many would’ve had Weatherald as a prospective opener for Australia’s Ashes summer at the start of the year. But better late than never as the saying goes and here he is, looking to make the most of his opportunities.

It may end up as Chris Rogers 2.0 for a potentially longer period of time. It may not necessarily take off. But the route to get his cap is bound to be satisfying for Weatherald, his family, Scollay, the Cricket Mentoring team and everyone who has played his/her part in shaping him into the person he is today. And that, will always stick no matter what the future holds.

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Edited by Sooryanarayanan Sesha