As tends to be the way with Australian selection these days, Jake Weatherald is on the older side at 31.<\/p>\n
He has played the bulk of his red-ball cricket for South Australia, making 60 first-class appearances for them over six seasons.<\/p>\n
However, his career has been kickstarted with a move to Tasmania in 2023-24 and his record has been strong there. Across 15 matches he’s made three centuries, averaging a tick under 45.<\/p>\n
His returns specifically this season – 301 runs at 38 – are less impressive, with no centuries from his eight visits to the crease.<\/p>\n
Weatherald is a pure opening batter, with all 145 of his innings in first-class cricket coming at the top of the order. In many ways he’s a classic left-handed opener, looking to score heavily square of the wicket, particularly through point; since joining Tasmania, he averages 136 with the cut shot.<\/p>\n
However, he is a far more aggressive player than his opening partner Usman Khawaja.<\/p>\n
Since moving to Tasmania two years ago, Weatherald’s first-class strike-rate is 68, the seventh quickest in the world among opening batters, and comparable to the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ben Duckett, and Zak Crawley – albeit at a lower level.<\/p>\n
That strokeplay does naturally come with a counter – Weatherald’s defensive technique does come with questions.<\/p>\n
In the last two Shield seasons, he’s been dismissed once every 41 defensive shots he plays, a significantly low figure for a specialist batter, let alone an opener – you can compare that with Marnus Labuschagne (154 defensive shots per dismissal) and Cameron Green (92) for context.<\/p>\n
England have moved away from opposition analysis in recent times, but even basic research will unearth a pattern of dismissals for Weatherald.<\/p>\n
Across his career against right-arm quicks, he much prefers bowling coming round the wicket, averaging 57 when they do so compared to 32 when they stay over the wicket.<\/p>\n
Jofra Archer will be licking his lips, averaging just 18 against left-handers from that angle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As tends to be the way with Australian selection these days, Jake Weatherald is on the older side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-273931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}