Jake Weatherald walked off the Marrara Cricket Ground in Darwin having been dismissed for a duck in front of the crowd he grew up among, and the arithmetic of a short Test career closed around him. Australia lost that first Test to Bangladesh – a nine-wicket defeat the Guardian described as historic – and when the selectors gathered on Monday there was only ever likely to be one name in the fallout. It arrived on Tuesday in a two-line statement from Cricket Australia.
Weatherald is out for the second and final Test in Mackay, which begins on Saturday, with Matt Renshaw called up in his place. It is the only alteration to a 13-player squad that had officially been named to cover both matches. That one substitution has been judged sufficient says as much about Australia’s faith in the rest of their batting order as it does about the opener who has paid for Darwin.
Jake Weatherald dropped after six Tests
Weatherald made 23 and 0 in Darwin, leaving him with 224 runs at 20.36 from six Test appearances, ESPNcricinfo reports. He entered the side as a late-blooming debutant at the start of last season’s Ashes and played throughout it, then spent the off-season in county cricket reworking his method. The tweaked technique was on display against Bangladesh, but he settled in neither innings: an edged drive against Hasan Mahmud on the opening day, a drag-on to the same bowler in the second.
“There was some change to Jake in terms of where he lined up and his movement patterns,” head coach Andrew McDonald said after the Darwin Test, before the decision had been made. “It’s always hard to critique small sample sizes, whether it holds up.”
Weatherald, 31, had seen it coming more clearly than most. Handed a central contract earlier this year, he spoke before the series as though the ground beneath him was already shifting. “I’ve got a good opportunity to play two games, hopefully, and make runs, get four innings to do that,” he said. “If I don’t do that then I put fate in someone else’s hands.” He got two.
Renshaw’s second act
Renshaw last played a Test in February 2023, against India in Delhi, the 14th of a career that once looked settled and then was not. He returns in good order: 499 runs at 49.90 in six Sheffield Shield matches for Queensland last season, plus nine one-day internationals and as many Twenty20s in the past year, and he was a late addition to Australia’s T20 World Cup squad in place of Matt Short. His Test average stands at 29.31. He had been on standby for this series after training with the squad in Brisbane.
The change Australia did not make
The more searching question was left unanswered. Marnus Labuschagne, who made 1 and 31 in Darwin, keeps his place despite a century drought ESPNcricinfo puts at 42 innings, stretching back to July 2023, across which he has averaged 25.32. His last nine Test innings have brought 166 runs at 18.44, with three scores past 30 in the last four and not one turned into a fifty.
“We want runs is the bottom line,” McDonald said. “It’s easy for me to sit here and try to defend that, but ultimately it’s 31. It’s not a big score. He’s lacked runs. He feels that. We feel that.” He was careful to spread the responsibility: “We’ve got to get the best out of Marn as well.” Labuschagne was dropped last year against West Indies and sent away to rebuild, returning with five domestic centuries in nine innings; mid-series, that route is not available.
So Australia travel to Mackay with a new opener, an old problem at No 3 and a series to save, in a week that has offered their cricket little comfort off the field either after David Warner’s drink-driving conviction. They are not the only Test side spending August mid-rebuild – England’s own reset begins at Headingley, where Joe Root returns as captain against Pakistan. The difference is that England are not one defeat from losing a series to Bangladesh.
