Jake Weatherald: From Barnsley to the Ashes

Jake Weatherald’s inclusion in the Australia’s 15-player squad for the first Ashes Test did not go unnoticed in Barnsley.

The 31-year-old could open the batting for his country but you may not know that he had two profitable summers in South Yorkshire for Barnsley Woolley Miners.

I caught up with Phil Chapman, the club’s Cricket Development Officer, to discuss how they signed Weatherald in 2022 & 2023 with a trip down memory lane to when the Australian was blazing away in the Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League.

Sometimes, it’s who you know… Barnsley’s Cricket Chairman at the time Jason Booth had got to know Jason Gillespie (who was latterly Jake’s coach at Adelaide Strikers). Barnsley put their hat in the ring when it became known that Weatherald was looking for an English club at short notice.

Barnsley had planned to re-sign Harpreet Singh Bhatia but a paperwork error stopped that from happening.

“We were in a bit of a panic. Then all of a sudden, we got this name, Jake Weatherald. I’d seen him in the BBL…guys were Googling him and seen him get a hundred in the final for Adelaide.”

Weatherald’s 115 off 70 balls in the 2018 Big Bash League Final wasn’t the only career highlight by any means and the counter-punching opener became a box-office overseas signing for the 2022 season.

He duly delivered with 1,800+ runs including a brutal 270 off 107 balls against Whiston Parish Church as Barnsley WMCC scored 512-9. A credible fourth place in the league’s Premier Division was eclipsed by limited overs success. Barnsley won the T20 Blast and reached the final of the Viking Cup (now the K3 Dental Cup).

Phil remembers Jake (above) learnt to play guitar and had read how it was down to many hours of practice and he applied this same philosophy to his cricket training:

“While Jake were over here, he’d find anyone he could. You used to have to give him throwdowns with a helmet and full pads on! I’ve never seen anyone hit a cricket ball like him.”

Weatherald’s six-hitting prowess included a monster hit for a midweek game at Bradfield Village Fellowship. Can you imagine facing him?! Anyway, apparently he clipped one off his toes from a medium-pacer that sailed 80-90 metres and would have cleared the ice-cream van that’s often stationed at the ground for emergency sustenance on a hot day.

Chapman recalls the innings of 270 at Whiston as a special knock: “He just went ballistic that day. The day after, we’d got the T20 final and he said ‘I’m going to go out in T20 mode.’ To be fair, you’d have thought he were in T20 mode all of the time anyway!”

Earlier in the season, Barnsley Woolley Miners faced Whiston Parish Church who had Aamer Jamal in their side.

Hitting over the graveyard at Whiston

The fast-bowling all-rounder from Pakistan would make quite an impression on the Test series against England in 2024 but Jamal was given the long handle treatment that late-May day at Shaw Lane by Weatherald.

In the return leg, the margin was 333 runs and Chapman can still picture the straight hits clearing the graveyard at the top end on a roasting hot day. Tough one to be in the field.

The second season was still productive (936 runs at an average of 55) but Jake had chosen to bat at three and that move wasn’t as fruitful although it was designed to give him the best opportunity back at Tasmania where he’d signed.

So, all eyes will be on Weatherald if he makes his Test debut for Australia in the Ashes and he’ll have plenty of well wishers in South Yorkshire I’m sure. As for Barnsley Woolley Miners, their 2026 plans are coming into sharper focus by signing Zaryab Ali, the left-handed opening batter for Pakistan A.