Selection chair George Bailey wants to see more from Ashes opener Jake Weatherald while remaining “incredibly interested” in Sam Konstas
Jake Weatherald’s first national contract was “an indication, not a guarantee” that he would be Australia’s Test opener in the medium-term, says national selector George Bailey.
While the Tasmania opener is in the box seat as the incumbent, Bailey played down the notion that Weatherald’s inclusion on the 21-player men’s contract list for the 2026-27 season announced today locked the 31-year-old in as one of the side’s openers.
“We’ve been pretty consistent and on the record of saying, we don’t pick a team until we need to pick a team,” Bailey told reporters today, with Australia facing up to 21 Tests in the next 15 months.
That period starts with two Tests against Bangladesh in August, with the first set to be an emotional homecoming for Darwin-born Weatherald as the city hosts its first Test since 2004.
Weatherald was steady if unspectacular in his debut Test series against England, scoring 201 runs at 22.33, passing fifty once for a high score of 72 against the pink ball in Brisbane.
“I think we’ve seen that, at his best, it can work at that level,” Bailey said of Weatherald’s game.
“So now it’s just about maybe tinkering with a couple of things and just being able to replicate that for longer periods and hopefully across a range of conditions.”
Weatherald shunned the Big Bash after the Ashes to work on his red-ball game and has now secured a late deal to play in the County Championship’s first division with Leicestershire for the next three months.
Following that, Weatherald will be required at training camp in Brisbane where an extended squad of Test hopefuls will be put through their paces before matches in Darwin and Mackay.
“We’ll have basically a month-long opportunity for camps up in Brisbane in the lead up to those Top End Tests,” confirmed Bailey.
“(Weatherald will) be a part of those, as will a large number of players, just knowing that we’re going to need some deep depth around all positions, across that period.”
Other candidates to feature at those training camps will be Matthew Renshaw and Sam Konstas, the latter of which has been dropped from the CA contract list for the year ahead.
Bailey said selectors remained “firmly interested” in what the future holds for Konstas.
“I thought we saw some promising signs towards the back end (of the Shield season) … he was consistently getting starts.
“At the start of the season, there was a lot of chopping and changing around technique and methods at different times … It looked like that was settling and he was he was starting to find his feet in terms of what he wanted to knuckle down and commit to, and what was working for him.
“So I think we can take some positives out of the fact he was getting consistent starts across those Shield games.
“Would he have liked to have gone on and scored some big runs out of that? No doubt. But he remains a player that we’re incredibly interested in.”
