‘I didn’t want to make it all about me’: Jake Weatherald on route to an Ashes call-up | Sam Dalling

JKe Weatherald and Justin Galeotti traveled separately on the short journey from the coffee shop to the nets for their planned hit. They trained as usual and Galeotti was oblivious to the fact that Weatherald had just received a life-changing phone call from Australia’s chairman of selectors, George Bailey, telling him his baggy green dream had almost arrived. The uncapped Weatherald was part of the 15-player Ashes squad for the first Test.

“It lasted about two minutes,” Weatherald said of the conversation with Bailey. “I didn’t want to bring it up [with Galeotti] because I felt like it would distract from the net session. I didn’t want to make it all about me. Then we would have talked about it all the time and not about the training.”

Didn’t the 31-year-old immediately tell his roommate? “No. He found out through the media and was quite frustrated,” says Weatherald. In any case, he communicated with his wife – “if she had found out through the media, she would have killed me” – and my mother.

With David Warner’s vacated spot still unfilled despite his last Test being 22 months ago, Weatherald should open the batting against England in a light breeze in the Perth Test starting on November 21.

Since the start of the 2024/25 summer, Weatherald has scored 1,391 runs at an average of 53.5, including 183 for Australia A against Sri Lanka A in July. Weatherald, in terms of runs, is the standout candidate. However, such an understated response may seem strange – until his path to Test cricket is considered.

Weatherald grew up in Darwin and had talent, but lacked the drive. “Coming from a very small town at the top of Australia you don’t really have the same understanding and core concept of hard work,” he says. “There was no pressure, no one pushing you. There was no pool of elite cricketers around. [I was] just a big fish in a small pond.”

Weatherald moved to Adelaide at the age of 15 and says he “probably got caught. I realized I was so lazy and very disorganised.” He had to change and he did.

Then there is Weatherald’s insistence on training rather than celebrating his first Test call-up. Obsession. The word peppers his conversation with Guardian Australia.

Since the pandemic, Weatherald has stepped away from cricket twice to protect his mental health. He was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and at first “he didn’t understand it and he overindulged. In some phases it was a blessing and in others it was an absolute curse.”

The last few times led to some prolonged ‘depressive episodes’. He couldn’t understand why the things he used to enjoy—exercising, fishing, spending time with his wife, playing guitar—no longer brought him comfort.

“For some reason I had no pleasure in it, no interest at all,” says Weatherald. “You spend hours and hours in bed. You don’t want to get up, sit in the sun or see any light. Your thoughts are nowhere. You think about the worst. These constant negative preconceptions of everything come into your mind. I didn’t understand the decisions I made, and my self-loathing carried over into my actions.”

Weatherald’s self-care no longer existed. His diet was poor and he stopped exercising. “I just saw it as an absolute task,” he says. “I was playing professional cricket, something I had dreamed of all my life, and all I could think about was lying in bed.”

The escape came thanks to his wife. “I lost a lot of respect for myself, but I respected her a lot,” Weatherald says. “When she said, ‘You have to deal with it yourself because this is terrible,’ I came back. I needed help so I could be the partner I wanted to be for her.”

Weatherald, with the help of the South Australian Cricket Association, sought the care he needed and realized he had ‘aggravated’ his own problems. “It took me a while to understand that even though my thoughts will continue to come for the rest of my life, my actions and what I decide to do about them are driven by me. It’s probably why it’s taken a while for me to get to where I am today in my cricket.”

There are still bad days. But that’s where his new-found knowledge comes into play. “How I respond to my thoughts has a greater impact than my actual thoughts themselves,” he says. So he forces himself to get up, to socialize, to exercise. His wife calls him out when he doesn’t, and he has the humility to listen.

“That was also linked to my cricket,” says Weatherald. “I can say, ‘What would a person performing do? How would he act if he walked into the middle?’ Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it.”

Ahead of the 2023–24 season, Weatherald left South Australia for Tasmania after scoring 3,837 Sheffield Shield career runs at 34.25. An early net session in Hobart was Weatherald’s Eureka moment, so much so that he still watches the footage occasionally. “I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my God, this was the moment I just captured,’” he says. “It’s strange. It took me until I was 28 to realize that maybe mastery is something you just try to get, and don’t worry too much about being perfect.”

Despite having found his wayWeatherald played the opening Shield match of the summer and was then ruled out for the rest of the season. He had not been dropped in red ball cricket before.

“Maybe it was a good time for me to think,” he says. “I was a die-hard cricketer and constantly looking for the next new thing to try. Now I thought, ‘If I get the chance to play in this team again, I don’t want to drop it.’ I wanted to come in and be the best player on that team and use a method that I support every time.”

That winter, having remained on the sidelines despite scoring heavily in the Big Bash and in Second XI cricket, Weatherald almost joined Victoria to play under his friend and mentor Chris Rogers. Tasmania convinced him to stay and Weatherald finished the 2024–25 Sheffield Shield season as top scorer with 906 runs at 50.33.

His strike rate rose to 68.27 – second only to Alex Carey among those who reached 500 runs that summer. A conscious choice to score faster? “No, certainly not,” he says. “It’s just the way I flow sometimes. I’m fortunate that this is my natural way of playing. But not every innings is going to look like this.”

“If I play Test cricket, I might have to bat one day and score 40. I have to be able to adapt. I feel I have the ability to rein it in and bat for a long time without taking any perceived risks.”