An Oddsworth Opinion
The number that argues for Jake Weatherald's Test recall
The story
South Australia, champions in each of the last two Sheffield Shield seasons, opened the new campaign by beating Victoria by an innings at Junction Oval. The report says Jake Weatherald, the South Australia opener, has been backed to make a return.
ESPNcricinfo · 10 October at 07:22 BSTWeatherald backed to return as South Australia thump VictoriaRead the full storyAn innings win at Junction Oval in the first week of October is the kind of result that gets the word dynasty into print before the pitches have dried out. South Australia, champions in each of the last two Sheffield Shield seasons, have beaten Victoria by an innings, and the report says Jake Weatherald is backed to return. The opener carries the bigger claim. Our ratings put him third among Sheffield Shield batters and eighth among men's Test batters in the world, worth about 16 runs a match more than an average player, which is a loftier standing than any result in Melbourne can confer on a side.
Weatherald's Test runs so far
The Test record tells a quieter story. Since a debut against England last November he has averaged 20.36 with the bat in Tests, against 33.36 for top-seven batters in men's Tests over the last two years. There is one fifty in that run, the 72 against England in December, and a string of starts either side of it, 23 and 18 and 21 and 34, the sort of innings that get an opener through the new ball and then leave him out before lunch, like a kettle that keeps being switched on and never quite boils. Six Tests across one summer, and one more against Bangladesh in August, have produced a method and a scorecard that does not yet match it.
Career average 20.4Not out
The case behind the recall
The rating is the case, and it holds. Third among Shield batters says the runs at home are real and plentiful, gathered over seasons of Adelaide pitches and travelling attacks, and six Tests in a single summer are too few to wipe that out. Selectors who dropped a Shield opener after one summer of starts would be throwing out the evidence gathered over years in favour of the evidence gathered over weeks. The Test average is the hard number against him. The Shield standing took longer to earn.
South Australia's own claim can sit for now. Two titles and an innings win over Victoria make a good side in form, and the opener they are backing has the standing to walk back into an Australian XI. The next new ball he faces for Australia will show whether the Adelaide runs travel, and on that standing alone the recall is the right call.