Australia has quickly become very interested in Jake Weatherald.
It is unsurprising given last season he was the most prolific opener in the country and chair of selectors George Bailey has said he is "well in the mix" for the Ashes with uncertainty over the make-up of the top three.
But it has been a long and at times very challenging journey for the 30-year-old.
He took mental health breaks from the game in 2020 and 2022 during which there were some extremely low moments. He credits wife Rachel, his partner of 15 years and a health professional in Adelaide, with helping him recover and reach a place of contentment, both personally and professionally.
"When I went through my dark times, and the times where I was going through all the mental struggles outside of cricket, she was someone who went, maybe cricket is a trigger, but maybe also there's other life stuff, and how am I going to help you through it?" Weatherald tells ESPNcricinfo.
"She was able to identify a lot of things and bring to light a lot of stuff that I didn't know about myself, in terms of how I could help myself out, what I could do to be healthy.
"I was able to take on experiences in a more holistic way, instead of being like, this is do or die. I've tried to make it like it's just a great opportunity to play cricket, perform, hopefully do some cool things and meet some amazing people. She gave me the ability just to compete and enjoy it like I did as a kid really."
Born and raised in Darwin, Weatherald played eight seasons for South Australia before moving to Tasmania. A free-flowing stroke-maker, he thrashed 904 Sheffield Shield runs in 10 games last summer at an average of 50.33 and a strike-rate of 68.27. The next fastest-scoring top four batter with at least 300 runs on the seamer-friendly pitches was Sam Konstas at a strike-rate of 54.10.
There is an air of simplicity to his play, a see-ball hit-ball method that mirrors his former team-mate Travis Head. There is a brashness and cockiness, too, which opponents have noted. But any perception he doesn't think deeply about the game would be well off the mark.
"I can come off sometimes as arrogant or confident," Weatherald says. "I think half the time it's a façade."
He works with a private mental performance coach, John Novak, to help get himself into the optimal frame of mind to perform at his best. Novak does not have many cricket clients but has worked with a range of athletes and coaches in other high-profile sports, including working with Australia's most recent female golf major winner in Grace Kim.
"I've been working with him for three years now," he explains. "His way of thinking was always about being positive and reframing everything. And it took me a while to believe in that, and to believe in that sort of mindset, to see everything is an opportunity.
"I think as a cricketer you are just naturally pessimistic about everything.
"But I think for me, it was building up my confidence around who I was as a person, but also who I was as a cricketer. How I wanted to go about it, how I wanted to speak, how I wanted to interact with people, and all that sort of flowed onto my batting. I know if I walk out, everything is a reframe. I've got about four overs tonight, late in the day, I'm going to seize an opportunity. I might openly speak about this as an opportunity to score 20 or 30 runs tonight, or I'm going to get through it, I'm going to show them I'm ready to go here.
"Johnny has had a big impact on that. He's been probably the biggest influence over my direct mindset performance stuff."
Weatherald, who only played one four-day match in his first season with Tasmania and explored a move away, hasn't been afraid to look outside the box for technical batting advice. He is a self-confessed tinkerer and believes it partly explains some of his inconsistent returns during his eight seasons with South Australia.
He scored Shield centuries in all of them bar his first in 2015-16 where he only played four games. He twice scored multiple hundreds in a season, including two in a match in 2017-18, but never averaged more than 41 in any given season and averaged 34.25 for South Australia in 60 matches.
He's still grateful for his time there, working closely with batting coach Steve Stubbings, who has also been a key mentor for Head, before joining Tasmania under Jeff Vaughan, another who has had a significant impact on Head's career, and Tasmania's current batting coach Mike Smith.
But unlike a lot of modern professionals in Australia, who rely almost exclusively on coaches in the system to oversee their batting, Weatherald has leaned on an external figure, too. Tom Scollay, a former Middlesex batter and long-time grade cricketer based in Perth, has built a successful private coaching business in Western Australia and Weatherald has worked with him extensively since meeting him through current Victoria coach Chris Rogers.
"He's someone I can feed off outside of the system, and someone that can give me a fresh pair of eyes, and someone's that's going to give me an honest opinion about what's going on," Weatherald says. "We went to India together. He provides opportunities for me to go train in different conditions, and that relationship is really cool."
He also credits time spent with former Australia wicketkeeper-batter Matthew Wade in his first season in Tasmania. There are some parallels between Wade's late-career renaissance as an all-format batter for Australia and what Weatherald is doing now. Wade's Test recall in the 2019 Ashes came off the back of a 1021-run season with Tasmania in 2018-19, the last 1000-plus run season by a batter in the Shield alongside Marcus Harris that same year.
There are also parallels in the method, with Weatherald's set-up looking much more akin to Wade's compact position than his earlier more upright stance when playing for South Australia.
"We worked on some little technical things, obviously triggering and then little shifts that happened the year I wasn't playing for Tasmania, or wasn't getting selected," Weatherald says. "I felt like I was the same player I am right now when I made those changes. I was hitting the ball just as well then as I am now, I just couldn't get a game.
"Once I made those shifts mentally about my prep, like how I was going to go about my batting and how I was going to lead into games, how I wanted to feel, how I wanted to hit the ball, what I wanted to do in terms of training, I had so much information from what hadn't worked and what had worked. And now I'm just in a zone. I know this stuff works for now.
"Obviously I can't predict the future but I'm in a place that I've got confidence in my game. I don't know how long that lasts for, but I've got confidence in my process."
So much confidence in fact, he has not been afraid to state publicly that he wants to play in the Ashes. "It's just not beating around the bush," he says. "I don't think anyone in state cricket is ever sitting there thinking they don't want to play for Australia. Obviously, I've done well, I feel like I'm going well.
"The question is, do you want to play? For sure, absolutely. And that's all I can say."
His style suggests he would be a good fit. His stroke-play would mesh nicely with a top-order that has at times been unable to assert pressure back on Test attacks in home conditions.
He is a well-known quantity within the dressing rooms, too, having played a lot of cricket recently with Beau Webster, and having been long-time team-mates with Alex Carey and Head in South Australia. Weatherald takes great inspiration from the latter's success at Test level.
"He's someone I sit there and just absolutely have always admired his mindset," he says. "He's probably someone I've looked at the most and said, that's the most mentally healthy person I've ever seen play cricket."
But if it doesn't happen, Weatherald won't worry too much. He's committed to Tasmania after extending his contract and excited about joining Hobart Hurricanes in the BBL, where he thinks he and Webster may be "running the drinks" in Hurricanes title defence. It is easy to forget that Weatherald has scored a century in a winning BBL final.
He was unperturbed by missing selection on the Australia A tour of India that takes place before the start of the Shield season despite scoring 54 and 183 for Australia A in his only two innings of the recent series against Sri Lanka A. Bailey assured him of the selectors' thinking around sending a younger group to India with longer-term development in mind.
Weatherald has continued to play, turning out for his home club Darwin in the Darwin and Districts competition. It is rare for players on the cusp of international selection to play club cricket these days. Weatherald has instead cracked two centuries in eight club games, in between proudly representing Northern Territory in the Top End T20 series which is largely being played by fringe and developing domestic players.
"I'm obviously thinking about red-ball cricket probably a lot more than my T20 stuff, but at the same time it's a good opportunity to come back represent Northern Territory," Weatherald says. "The facilities here are amazing. I get to play with some mates that I grew up with and some new friends. So it's a pretty cool experience."
It helps that the fishing is good, too. Instead of trying to lure bream on the banks of the ice-cold Derwent River or Browns Creek in Tasmania, something he loves to do during the summer to take his mind away from the game, he is planning a five-day fishing trip with some mates to East Alligator River in the Northern Territory in search of some big barramundi.
Weatherald will have some music blaring too. He is in an old soul with a passion for classic rock and the blues.
"I love my guitar, I love playing," he says. "Not that I'm any good at it. All my idols are all musicians. Maybe not the lifestyle they lived, but in terms of inspiration around cricket I've always had them as my idols.
"I love Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits. I just enjoy the fact that they were able to go out and do things that wowed everyone.
"That's always what I wanted to do as a cricketer."