When Usman Khawaja treated a legion of fans to a slick dance during the fourth night session of December’s Adelaide Test, perhaps no Australian cricketer had exhibited such polished moves since Chris Rogers following the whitewash of the 2013-14 Ashes.
The silky impromptu hot-stepping is one of few similarities one can draw between the two men. One, after all, was born in St George in Sydney’s south, and the other in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad.
But when Khawaja straps on his pads and strides to the middle of Hobart’s Bellerive Oval in the final Ashes Test, the elegant left-hander will get the chance to sew up a position at the top of Australia’s order at the age of 35. Just like Rogers did in 2013.
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Khawaja’s potential was limitless when a 24-year-old with a baby’s face powered to the middle of the Sydney Cricket Ground on his Test debut. This was a young man who had compiled 598 Sheffield Shield runs at a tick under 75 until that point in the summer, including a knock of 214. He had also been thrust into Australia’s XI to fill the void at first drop of none other than Ricky Ponting, who had been felled by a broken finger. Khawaja was unleashed against England in January 2011 and, although he managed scores of only 37 and 21, his poise and finesse at the crease left a striking impression.
It was a dramatically transformed Khawaja who peeled off twin centuries when his Test career returned to the venue of its inception early this month. While Steve Smith and the late Phillip Hughes were Khawaja’s only teammates younger than him in his debut Test, only David Warner was older when he returned to the XI in Sydney for his 45th appearance. Khawaja took stance for the Australian national anthem not as a rising prospect with unbridled potential but a veteran who, as a result of Travis Head’s positive COVID-19 test, had been gifted an unexpected recall less than a month after his 35th birthday. Nic Maddinson had been added to the Australian squad as cover, but selectors backed Khawaja as the stop-gap man. A weathered cricketer who the selectors had punted from the team on so many occasions, most recently after the Leeds Test of the 2019 Ashes, was back in the fold.
The cricket world is craving more of Khawaja after his 45 outings in the baggy green – and not only because of the stop-start journey his career has travelled, but the splendid aesthetics of his strokeplay. Among his sparkling array of drives, pull shots, slog sweeps, reverse sweeps and cuts last week was a delicate late cut for four off the bowling of Stuart Broad, the seasoned first-class campaigner guiding a delivery to the fine-leg boundary just after reaching 50 in his second dig. It was sublime. Eleven years after pulling Chris Tremlett for four in glorious fashion off the second ball of his debut Test innings, Khawaja’s beautiful batsmanship was again on display. David Gower, Mark Waugh and Damien Martyn had graced bygone eras with poetry at the crease, and Khawaja, at first with a Gray-Nicolls and now a DSC, has followed in a similar vein.
The selectors’ decision to recall Head for the Hobart Test at the expense of embattled opener Marcus Harris has given Khawaja a shot at reinvention. Rounding out his mercurial Test career with twin hundreds would have made for an incredible denouement, but he now has a chance to stamp himself as a mainstay of the Australian XI, redirecting his journey like Rogers.
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For many years it appeared that Rogers would retire as a member of the one-Test club, having filled in for an injured Matthew Hayden at the WACA in 2008 before repeatedly losing out to several other opening candidates, including Phil Jacques, Simon Katich, Hughes, Shane Watson and Ed Cowan.
But the rugged left-hander won back a spot in the Australian XI at the age of 35 and seized his chance in emphatic style. Between the ages of 35 and 37, he garnered 1996 runs at 44.35, including five centuries and a top score of 173. No player from Australia nor England tallied more runs across the 10 Ashes Tests of 2013 and 2014 than Rogers.
Will Pucovski, Henry Hunt, Bryce Street and Tim Ward are among those who could make a position at the top of Australia’s order their own in the near future, but it’s Khawaja who’ll join Warner in the middle in Hobart.
Like Rogers, he could lock up that spot for two years in the second half of his 30s, beginning with the final Test of the Ashes and continuing with 2022 visits to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India. A return to Australia for another home summer follows on the calendar, before Pat Cummins‘ men embark on their 2023 Ashes tour of England.
Khawaja, now in the finest touch of his life, could finish his Test career as a stable fixture at the top of Australia’s order.
A golden chance, afforded to him following a golden return to the Test scene, lies ahead.
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