Weatherald wiser after fruitful winter

In Jake Weatherald's first two JLT One-Day Cup innings this summer, he made a hundred and a duck.

And that right there, he insists, is his problem.

"Consistency is my key in everything," Weatherald told cricket.com.au recently. "I want to get my average above 40 in all formats, which comes back to being consistent."

The whispers about Weatherald have been around for a while but recently they've grown into staccato shouts, punctuating the cricket landscape like one of his well-timed cover drives through the in-field.

There's a lot to like about the South Australian opener, who is only 23 but has already made a habit of scoring big in big matches, most recently a spectacular hundred to win Adelaide Strikers last summer's KFC Big Bash final.

But it was the longer formats that Weatherald focused on through the winter, where he was the senior man in the National Performance Squad – a 10-man group of highly-talented youngsters based out of the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, living and breathing cricket during the colder months.

There he linked up with Chris Rogers, the ex-Test batsman turned high performance coach with Cricket Australia.

The pair immediately forged a strong bond, one left-handed opener soaking up all the information he could from another boasting decades of experience.

"We got along straight away," Weatherald said. "I think we complement each other well, because he's quite insightful and I'm willing to learn as much as I can.

"He challenges me a lot. He hits me hard, challenges me mentally and physically, and I respond well to that."

Rogers saw the upside to Weatherald's game but he also saw the inconsistencies. He preaches patience to the batters he coaches, and tries to get them to identify the difficult periods in an innings where survival must be prioritised above run-scoring. It's a work in progress for Weatherald, who is by inclination an aggressor.

"He's quite intelligent, he thinks about things differently and he challenges you a lot to problem solve a lot during your innings," Weatherald said of Rogers, who averaged 42.87 in Test cricket and scored more than 25,000 first-class runs at an average touching 50.

"I'd never really thought of it like that before; I'd just gone with the flow. He's trying to make me more consistent, figuring out ways of handling all the variables and staying in and scoring runs.

"He'll whip out the new ball, which will swing around, and he'll say he's got three slips and a gully in the field. Or the wicket might be a bit flatter, or a green seamer, and he'll say, 'How are you going to play?' You have to adjust to those conditions.

"I might've done it subconsciously, but I've never actually stood there and thought, 'How am I going to go about this?' and do it for long periods of time.

"We were talking about (playing in) England, and we watched a hundred he scored at Lord's as an example, where he just put away his drives because of the conditions.

"And even Davey (Warner), who's an aggressive player, we were watching some footage of him, where he'd put away most of his shots.

"Sometimes you've just got to dig in, defend well and play straight. Let the ball swing before you play your shot.

"He says the moments will come where you can bring out your A-game, but you need different types of games for different conditions."

Weatherald, who has previously successfully incorporated breathing and visualisation exercises into his preparation, is averaging a highly impressive 45.69 in List A cricket, with four hundreds.

At first-class level that drops to 35.51 (three hundreds), and the left-hander spent time with Rogers dissecting his performances in last summer's JLT Sheffield Shield, in which he was the fourth-highest run-scorer, with 765 at 38.25 (two hundreds, four fifties).

"There were moments (last Shield season) where you're 50 or 60 and you've done all the hard work, and you just need to milk it for another 40 runs and you've made a hundred," he said.

"I've made 10 first-class fifties and five of them could easily have been hundreds, then all of a sudden I'd have eight Shield hundreds.

"So it's about thinking clearly, breaking the game down into those little segments and getting through those hard patches."

Weatherald and Rogers also zeroed in on the batter's technique, particularly his driving and play of swing bowling. While he was overlooked for the Australia A squads that toured India recently, he believes he wasn't far away.

"I'd like to think I was close but at the same time there were some very strong players in that squad," he added.

"The word was I was close, but you need that consistency. If I ever play for Australia or Australia A it'll be a reward for playing consistently."