You have to start at the end. The celebration is unlike any other. Usman Khawaja starts recognisably, jumping as he crosses for a run, brandishing the bat like a fist pump with custom extensions. But the feeling boils up in him, something frothing its way to the top and over.
He throws his bat away, one arm up involuntarily like the jukebox just hit the chorus of Don’t Stop Believin’. It’s not a clean throw, no mic-drop drama, not planned. The bat tumbles from his hand to the ground because his body flails, a physical expostulation as response to a feeling that he does not know how to express.
After wielding that bat perfectly in four sessions of a Test match, he can no longer hold it. Nor does he try. In kinship with Forrest Gump, he just keeps running. There is something naked about a batter without a bat, a snail out of its shell. But if Khawaja is vulnerable now, it is only in showing something of himself. He raises both fists to the Australian balcony, standing and basking. By the time Alex Carey tracks him down for congratulations, their embrace is almost next to Ben Stokes at the top of his mark.
Moments earlier, Khawaja has had a false dawn on 96, a cover drive that looks like four but pulls up for two. He has to try for the hundred again, this time a steer that does reach the fence. Before this Test, his highest score in England was 54, in his first Test in the country in 2013.
England is where he was dropped in 2019, where he thought his career had ended. Now it is where he has added the final exclamation mark to his storied comeback.
Khawaja has always been watchable in the extreme. When he debuted in 2011, replacing an injured Ricky Ponting for a brief but promising innings, the writers at Sydney’s broadsheet paper were so enthralled that they forgot to consult with one another about who had which topic. The next day’s edition carried pages and pages about one player’s 37.
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Since then, there have been times of praise and criticism, but a broad underlying goodwill easily roused from latent to active with any good innings. Khawaja was often defensive and snippy when his performances were questioned.
When he was dropped in 2019 after three more underwhelming Ashes matches, he had played 44 Tests for eight centuries and an average just above 40, results that were solid but didn’t do his ability justice, with a record that was good at home and poor away. He still seemed to think his omission was unfair.
It is a neatly fitting piece, then, that the time when he has started proving points is also the time when he no longer had a point to prove. This is the secret track of his career, the unlisted bit at the end of the record when the band can do whatever they like. The older Khawaja with a burgeoning family life, the one who had let go of any hope of playing for Australia again, is free.
When his return started during the southern Ashes in January 2022, Khawaja was on the ultimate busman’s holiday, expecting to play one match as replacement for the Covid-pinged Travis Head. It was, at least for one of them, a fortunate quirk that would let Khawaja play a farewell match at his original home ground in Sydney.
Instead, he peeled off two of the most debonair hundreds of his career, some correction to a modest Ashes record.
His next shortfall involved playing away, and in spinning conditions. He dominated Australia’s win in Pakistan, averaging 165, was solid in Sri Lanka, then went to India to make 81, 60 and 180 in the final three Tests. Central to these efforts was superhuman physical endurance, patience, concentration.
That left England as the gap to fill. In these conditions, Khawaja had been a flirter, a constant worry on the outside edge, even if four county seasons had been profitable. The World Test Championship final this month signalled that the concerns were still live, twice nicking seamers early. Then here on Saturday, leading to that moment of delirium, he came good.
Tested in the channel, over the wicket and sometimes around, Khawaja endured, even as David Warner chopped on, Marnus Labuschagne nibbled, Steve Smith got feet tangled.
As Head upped the tempo, Khawaja rode slipstream, elevating his game to drive over cover and hit sixes straight. With Head gone and the team teetering, Khawaja closed up again.
At 67 for three and 148 for four and 220 for five Australia should have been gone. Instead, Khawaja remained, watching, waiting, rasping a pull shot or a cover drive. Past his hundred, the cherry on the sundae came when he survived Stuart Broad’s stump-rattler thanks to an overstep.
It was the one false shot as he took Australia to 311 for five, trailing England by 82. The hundred, the celebration, that wasn’t the end of the story after all. Khawaja carried on for another 25 overs and reached stumps on 126 not out. One thing he has proved is that he loves nothing more than to go long.
