Why Weatherald beat Konstas, Renshaw into Ashes squad

Jake Weatherald’s ability to marry fast scoring with consistent output is what won him a “knife-edge” selection race to be included as an opening batter in Australia’s extended Ashes squad to face England in Perth this month.

Weatherald, a 31-year-old opener for Tasmania, has been the outstanding aggressive top-order player over the past couple of years. He has put numerous attacks to the sword on sporting Sheffield Shield pitches with a consistency that selection chair George Bailey pointed out on Wednesday.

“There’s been a good consistency in the way he approaches batting. He’s in a really clear place,” Bailey said. “I don’t see any sort of shift innings to innings in the way he goes about it, so that says to me it’s someone who has a clear understanding of the way they will play and the way they feel like they’ll get the best performances out of themselves.

“By virtue of that, he scores at four runs an over and has some attacking strengths without being cavalier.

“A lot of discussion was centred around the method and the way we’d like that player to play. How they play naturally and then how we feel like that might complement other players that are potentially around them.”

Weatherald’s even approach has contrasted with the growing pains of 20-year-old Sam Konstas, who has been dropped, and Matt Renshaw, who was favoured by many seasoned judges including Steve Waugh.

Mike Hussey, who played in 79 Tests for Australia, said that Weatherald’s selection had to be lauded as a reward for outstanding displays in domestic cricket and as a stylistic balance for Usman Khawaja.

“It’s a really good selection because he’s done well for Tassie over the last couple of years,” Hussey told this masthead. “He’s the leading run-scorer in Shield cricket [in that time] so I like to see them rewarding guys who are dominating the level below.

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“He’s quite an aggressive sort of opener, he keeps the game moving forward, he’s at an age now where I think he has a good understanding of his own game.

“[Khawaja] had a great partnership with David Warner and those guys knew each other so well. So if Weatherald is the one who opens with Usman, then they’ll have to start building that relationship. But the selectors were probably thinking about having complementary sorts of players.”

Weatherald, who originally played for South Australia, will play in Perth if Cameron Green demonstrates that he can bowl the overs required of an all-rounder. But if Green cannot, Beau Webster is likely to retain his place, with the recalled Marnus Labuschagne to open alongside Usman Khawaja.

“If required, I think he [Labuschagne] can do it [open],” Bailey said. “I think I’ve said in the past, I’m confident most players in Australia if they bat in the top three have the capability of opening.”

Australia’s squad is only for the first Test, starting in Perth on November 21. Bailey told reporters Australia had not decided if Weatherald would be in the XI.

“That’s the squad and we’ll work through the XI as we get closer,” Bailey said.

“What’s impressed us about Jake is, if you look at his performance over 18 months to 24 months, it’s been really solid. I think there is a method there that we like and is complementary to those other players around him in the squad. He scores at a good rate and the way he goes about his innings is impressive.

“There’s been lots of batsmen scoring runs.”

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Bailey said Green would bowl in the next Shield round, starting early next week.

“There’s been a long build for Cam. It’s been a slow and steady and very deliberate build-up, so I’m confident that will continue,” Bailey said.

“We’ll get good information from this next round of Shield cricket, and he’ll be at the bowling crease. They [Green and Webster] have played together in the past, so there’s no reason why [they can’t play together].”

Bailey praised Labuschagne for his resurgence at domestic level since he was dropped in the Caribbean this year.

“What we’ve seen is runs, time at the crease … I think there’s an energy and method that, I think, is really attractive. We don’t need to see any more – he’s in the squad,” Bailey said.

“You know what Marn’s like; as soon as he was left out of that West Indies team, his first question was, ‘How many runs do you need for me to come back?’ It was a very clear message – the runs will be a byproduct of some of the other things that we wanted to see, and part of that was not getting back to the old Marn, but a method and a way of batting and some technical things we wanted to see.”

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