THE LAST time the Ashes were contested, in 2023, Jake Weatherald was playing for Barnsley Woolley Miners in the Yorkshire Premier South and telling his Shaw Lane team-mates of his ambitions to play for Australia.
Two years on and the 31-year-old opening batter is in the hosts’ squad for the first Test of this year’s Ashes which starts next week.
Barnsley’s cricket chair Jason Booth said: “It’s great to see that Jake has been selected in the Australia Ashes squad.
“It was always his aim to represent Australia and wear the baggy green and he spoke about it consistently while playing for us. Jake joins a long list of ex Barnsley players who have represented their country.
“Developing both First Class and international cricketers is something that the club has a great tradition of and will always be proud of.
“We like to think we helped him a tiny bit along the way but it’s all really down to his hard work, character and talent.
“I texted him when the squad was announced and wished him well from everyone at the club and he responded.
“Jake can get a hundred in both innings but we want England to win by ten wickets.
“We wish him well and hopefully he stays in the team and we get to see him as part of the side coming over to England in a couple of years and we can get him back at the club.”
Weatherald arrived in 2022 and scored 1,736 runs that season, averaging 75 and reaching five hundreds.
He returned the following year and was slightly less prolific, scoring 732 at an average of 46 with six 50s and one ton.
Booth said: “We go through agents to sign our overseas players and Jake came up. I spoke to Jason Gillespie (former Australia player and Yorkshire coach) who is a friend of mine and Jason pretty much got him over the line and said ‘Barnsley is the club for you’. “Jason said he hit the ball harder than anyone in cricket, and we saw that. His performances speak for themselves. He was obviously a step above the usual overseas player we get at our level.
“But he also changed the intensity, structure and purpose of our training.
“Even if it doesn’t look like it at the minute, because we’ve been relegated, we will feel the benefit of that of professionalism and attitude for years to come.
“We have youngsters who were 16 or 17 when Jake was here and are now 19 or 20 and they practise in a way Jake was a catalyst for. In the second year, Jake had a coaching role for the young talented players who had an extra session on Mondays. He turned Beck Frostick, who came through our youth system, into the best English player in the league in a season, but now Beck has moved to Australia.
“Jake was instrumental in introducing the idea of giving players caps when they play for the first team. They are not baggy greens but they are similar.”
Jake was part of the Barnsley side which won the Twenty20 Blast in both his seasons at the club, but is arguably best remembered for scoring 270 at Whiston as Barnsley posted 512.
That was a ECB Premier Division record until Hoylandswaine passed it this year. Booth said: “He was out with ten overs to go so we were actually disappointed. In the week leading up to that game, Jake went down south to work with a hitting coach because he was always looking for ways to improve.
“It was a phenomenal knock. We won two Twenty20 trophies and we should have won the league one season but we lost to Sheffield United on a bad day for us and that probably cost us.”
When he joined Barnsley in 2022, Weatherald told the Chronicle: “It’s definitely my goal to play for Australia.
“I am getting into my prime to play international cricket.
“I have come across as a pro and my responsibility is to win games.
“Then I want to take match-winning performances into First Class cricket back home and that’s how you get into international cricket.”
