After surviving the glare of a home Ashes campaign in his first act as an international cricketer, Jake Weatherald could not have asked for a more welcoming stage for his second.
It’s been a “strange” homecoming, according to Weatherald, Darwin’s first-born-and-bred Test cricketer. A regular routine of fishing, club cricket and a quiet drink on Mitchell Street has been superseded by his preparation to resume his opening partnership with Travis Head this Thursday.
Not that he has missed out completely. Only hours after landing on Saturday did the 31-year-old venture out to the city’s outskirts to watch his junior side Darwin Cricket Club face Southern Districts in a hard-fought club game. He was up before dawn the following morning to catch barramundi with wicketkeeper Alex Carey on a day trip to the Tiwi Islands.
“Coming up and representing your country is obviously quite a proud moment,” Weatherald told reporters on Monday after reacclimatising himself with the punishing humidity in a long training hit. “To be in front of Territorians and knowing the journey I’ve gone through to be here is pretty cool.”
Weatherald conceded his first summer in the Baggy Green was a learning curve as much for the extra scrutiny as it was for the extra pace England’s bowlers threw at him.
In surrounds that are familiar, but a world away from the country’s southern ports during an Ashes summer, Weatherald faces a different pressure this week. “I probably cop more grief if I don’t do well up here,” he smiled.
In addition to a significant contingent of family and friends turning out to watch Weatherald, a pair of local radio DJs are encouraging locals to don bald caps, tattoo sleeves and earrings to form the NT’s answer to the Richies: ‘The Weathers’.
“Hopefully I make some runs for you,” he said to his somewhat dubious mirror images at a media opportunity at East Point Beach.
While averaging 22.33 from his 10 innings against England was enough to maintain his spot, Weatherald himself acknowledged Mark Waugh’s recent suggestion that those numbers need an uptick to get to October’s South Africa tour is self-evident.
He has adopted several technical alterations designed to help him cope with international cricket’s best bowlers, incorporating them during a productive recent County Championship stint with Leicestershire.
“There’s been a few tinkerings, hopefully someone sees it,” he said. “It feels like I’m completely different (in how he is setting up), but everyone says I’m still pretty similar, which is sort of what I wanted a little bit. I didn’t want to change anything dramatically.
“I tried to understand what I was really good at and what I do well in first-class cricket and what I could improve on and I did well in the Ashes and what I could slightly adjust to make a better game plan overall.
“I think I’ve done that, so I’m pretty pumped to go out and show it.”
Long-time South Australia teammate Travis Head has become one of Weatherald’s main champions after his fellow left-hander helped disarm England’s new-ball bowlers with a series of punchy partnerships during last summer’s 4-1 Ashes victory.
The more senior of the opening duo stressed the need to “temper expectations” even considering Bangladesh, set for their first Tests in this country in more than two decades, lost to a modest Cricket Australia XI after being skittled for only 54 in a warm-up match on Saturday.
“There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny around what goes on – it’s a Test match and we’re playing for World Test Championship points,” Head said.
“Sometimes playing the better countries, you sit there with expectation. You go into a Test going, ‘I just hope I get through it’.
“Then you may come up against a team like Bangladesh, with the week they’ve had and the expectation of, ‘I really expect myself to get runs’, and that’s sometimes the hardest place to be, when you go out there expecting to (make runs).
“Because the game is a brutal game. So I think it’s just about tempering expectations over the next little period (and) through these two Tests.
“It’s just riding the wave of on field, off field, everything that comes with international cricket. I think that’s the funnest part about it – playing is the easiest part. It’s navigating through all the other stuff that goes on around us.”
For all of Weatherald’s local knowledge, he remains as in the dark as his teammates over the prevailing conditions for the first Test at Marrara Stadium since 2004.
While several of the current Test group featured in last year’s two T20Is against South Africa played on the drop-in surface, Weatherald was the only one to feature in the Australia A game against Sri Lanka A played on the same wicket the preceding month.
That match marked a return to first-class cricket at the ground for the first time since 2006. The adjacent Marrara Cricket Ground, which has a natural turf wicket, is more generally Darwin’s main cricket venue but does not have the infrastructure to host the crowd expected for a Test.
Weatherald has in fact played more junior Australian rules football games at the 12,000-capacity stadium more readily associated with Darwin’s No.1 sport. Marrara’s main grandstand, in front of which Australia sweated through a long fielding and catching session on a steamy Monday morning, is named after one of the many Indigenous footy stars hailing from the NT, Maurice Rioli Senior.
Slowly, cricket’s imprint on the remote city is growing too. After day three of this coming Test, Darwin CC will celebrate its 50th anniversary in Fannie Bay. The club also boasts another current Test player in Beau Webster, who played for the club in 2021.
“Hopefully we’ve won by then,” said Weatherald of Saturday’s celebration, “and we can have a few drinks.”
NRMA Insurance Bangladesh Test series
First Test: August 13-17, Marrara Stadium, Darwin, 10am (local)
Second Test: August 22-26, Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay, 10am (local)
Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster
Bangladesh squad (first Test): Najmul Hossain Shanto (c), Mehidy Hasan Miraz (vc), Soumya Sarkar, Shadman Islam, Tanzid Hasan Tamim, Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim, Litton Das, Amite Hasan, Jaker Ali, Taijul Islam, Taskin Ahmed, Hasan Mahmud, Syed Khaled Ahmed, Ebadot Hossain Chowdhury, Musfik Hasan
