Usman Khawaja was there. He stood a mere ten metres away, facing the front of the mosque. My dad was the one who had to point it out to me; I hadn’t been able to spot him. He was indistinguishable in posture from anyone else in the room. There was no fanfare about his presence. It was simply where he was on a Friday afternoon. I was eleven then, still young enough to believe that cricketers existed as figures away from ordinary life. A cricketer was a hero glimpsed on TV or in the gladiatorial theatre of the Gabba. A cricketer was not someone who queued for ablution or stood shoulder to shoulder in silence.
It would be easy for me to cast this moment in the narrative of representation, and no doubt Khawaja has chosen himself to champion that weight. But that wasn’t what it meant to me. I had never been taught, I had never thought, that someone like me couldn’t play cricket for Australia (not that my talent allowed that to ever be a question). It didn’t matter to me that he was also from Pakistan, just as my parents are, or that he was Muslim. What disturbed my childish fancies was something else entirely, something far simpler. I struggled to reconcile that an Australian cricketer could be here at all, among us. In the same room as me. If I had seen Steve Smith in a shopping mall, I’m sure my reaction would have been the same.
In the six years or so since, I have learnt cricketers exist outside of the field. I have been in a cafe, with Khawaja at a small table nearby, and the idea of an Australian cricketer has softened from a mythological figure to something far more human. When I was eleven, I could not appreciate the complexity of Khawaja being part of the Australian cricket team, or what that might all even mean. I simply thought of him as an Australian cricketer, like any other.
Fortunately, I am no longer quite as naive; I can now see exactly what Usman Khawaja represents. Unabashedly himself, refusing to conform when it would have been oh so easy to. By simply existing as himself in the spaces he occupies, he allows people to imagine, just as millions have done before, that it is them there. Yet his presence was never just limited to an example or an optic. On the field, Khawaja was understatedly brilliant.
He ranks 15th on Australia’s list of highest Test run scorers, nestled between Mike Hussey and Neil Harvey. He needs only thirty runs more to climb another place. In an era where batting has been difficult, let alone opening, his average of 44.36 as an opener since his return makes him staggeringly 60% better than other openers in the same games. Even when compared against all batters, not just those who walk out first, his returns have been almost 50% better. Since reclaiming his spot at the top of the order, Khawaja has been Australia’s second most effective batter behind Steve Smith.
Early in his career, he was scrutinised for his ability to play against the turning ball. What once seemed a vulnerability, he transformed into a strength. Indispensable in overseas tours to Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and the UAE. What once may have been trials were rather an exhibition of mastery. Across these countries, Khawaja averaged 66.88, including five centuries.
Khawaja’s languidness has often been misread as indifference, his easy style a sign that surely there would be no substance. A familiar critique that he dismantled through sheer performance.
He has already moved to unpick the old fences that once stood, patrolling far beyond the boundary rope. Championing inclusion and representation, Khawaja’s work outside of the game will likely, and rightfully outshine the numbers, the aggregates, and whatever records that sit by his name.
Khawaja was told that he was he’d never be able to play cricket for Australia. I was never told I couldn’t. The contrast speaks to the country we are and the country we are becoming. Khawaja, in many ways, has become the flag bearer, emblematic of a change from which I, in my own small way, have benefited.
And now he returns to Sydney, the place where his career began, where it was reborn, and where it will finally come to rest. On debut he stepped in for an injured Ricky Ponting. Years later, his phoenix-like return only arrived because a Covid-stricken Travis Head left a spot to be filled. Even in this series, when the obituaries were already written, a bout of vertigo for Steve Smith opened the door for one last time. In a period where Australian cricket hasn’t been able to find consistent run scorers, a drought of the machines of the past, it is curious how circumstance has played its role in Usman Khawaja’s career.
When I was a boy – younger than I am even now- I never separated Khawaja from any other Australian cricketer. To me, they were all the same impossibly heroic figures performing their Herculean tasks for their country. The slaying of the Nemean Lion pales in comparison to a Test match victory. Khawaja’s had always had to play the role of the outsider, and yet to me he was the very same: a hero in the green and gold.
But time has given me perspective and with it the understanding that Khawaja fought to be seen as simply Australian. I thought that we were all beginning from the same place. He had not.
That I believed otherwise is, in its own way, part of his legacy.
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