BREAKING: Jake Weatherald dropped as Aussies swing axe after Darwin disaster

A third-ball duck against Bangladesh has brought to an end Jake Weatherald’s stint as Australian opener, with the national selectors axing the left-hander in favour of Matt Renshaw.

The 31-year-old had hoped for a triumphant return to his home town in Darwin but instead another two failures in the Top End has capped his international stint at six Tests in what is a brutal blow for his career.

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With Australia needing to win in Mackay to square the series against Bangladesh and avoid losing its first series in four years, selectors made the call to cull Weatherald, who had conceded leading into the Darwin Test that he needed to make runs.

Marnus Labuschagne is safe for now, though Australian coach Andrew McDonald said after the nine-wicket loss to the Tigers that the struggling No.3 needed “big runs” in order to secure his future.

Renshaw made a big impression when debuting for Australia a decade ago only to fall out of favour in 2018 and played the most recent of his 14 Tests in 2023 when used as a substitute batter in India.

But the left-hander, whose top Test score of 184 came against Pakistan at the SCG in 2017, had been training with an expanded squad of 19 players in Brisbane in the weeks prior to the Darwin debacle after impressive white-ball form.

With an arduous 12 months of cricket ahead, with a testing tour against the reigning World Test champions South Africa to follow in October, the selection panel headed by George Bailey decided it was time to take action at the top of the order.

It comes after Australian captain Pat Cummins said following the nine-wicket loss in Darwin that Australia’s top-order needed to find a way to bat longer irrespective of the conditions they are facing.

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Renshaw has only been added to the squad of 13, with reserve batter Josh Inglis also an option. But as Aussie great Mark Waugh told foxsports.com.au, he feels the Western Australian is better suited down the order.

“Josh Inglis is around the squad at the moment as a spare batsman, but I don’t really see him as an opener or a number three. I think he’s more of a middle order player in Test match cricket,” Waugh said.

“I think McSweeney (and) Renshaw, they’re in my eyes probably the next two or three cabs off the ranks. So they’re probably not bashing the door down, but they’re the ones that the selectors, I think, would look at.”

When assessing Renshaw’s prospect during the Darwin Test, Fox Cricket expert analyst Kerry O’Keeffe said he had watched the left-hander closely over the past couple of seasons and was confident he was “getting better”.

“I watched him a lot last year and he is improving with every year,” O’Keeffe said.

He averaged 49.9 in the Sheffield Shield when making three centuries, though he was batting down the order.

Former opener David Warner said he would have liked to see Renshaw back at the top of the order for Queensland this year before he returned to the Test team in that position.

“Well, if he opens this year for Queensland, I think he can make his way back into the Australian team,” he said.

“It’s about ‘What has Matt Renshaw learnt from when he was playing there in that environment? What has he learnt there that he can adapt into the environment today?’

“He’s had some white ball success, which is fantastic, but it’s just that other side of it with the Test match stuff. Has he learned a lot from when he first played? That’s my question.”

Weatherald, who earned a spot on the back of some solid Sheffield Shield form after Nathan McSweeney and Sam Konstas were tried as openers against India through 2024/25, showed promise initially against England when scoring 72 in Brisbane.

But the English attack was able to identify a flaw in his technique, with Jofra Archer ruthlessly honing in on his pads to trap him LBW several times during the latter stages of the Ashes.

Weatherald spent time in the off-season playing County cricket and had worked on his technique but standing straighter opened other avenues of dismissal in Darwin, with the now South Australian representative looking anxious at the crease.

But given the lack of runs on offer at the top of the order, selectors made the move now, which offers struggling Labuschagne a life-line, though he too is on notice.

“He’s lacked runs. He feels that. We feel that. We’re working incredibly hard as a coaching group … we’ve got to get the best out of Marn as well,” he said.

“He’s had a bit of a lull. He knows that, he’s gone to work and I think we saw some change in the way that he played, so that’s good. So some of that work that he had done feels as though it’s stuck up under pressure … but he needs some big runs. But it is 31. He is disappointed with that. It is a missed opportunity. He needs some big runs.”

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