When Usman Khawaja made a century in India to start off the Ahmedabad Test on Thursday, it didn’t come as a surprise. Just over a year ago the same idea would have been astonishing. At least, it would have been for the outside observer, who would have known that Khawaja had a record of problems batting against spin. The player himself may have had more belief.
Khawaja can be a punchy customer. His dealings with the media have a bit of prickle, taking issue with lines of questioning that he doesn’t agree with. Fair enough, it counters laziness from the other side of the exchange. In a more collaborative interview with Cricbuzz recently, Khawaja explained his relationship with spin to writer Bharat Sundaresan. Perhaps that helped get his thoughts in order, because he voiced things similarly when he spoke to a press conference in Ahmedabad.
The paraphrased version was that even within the team, his dismissals to spin reinforced a narrative that he couldn’t play it until the prophecy became self-fulfilling. “You probably want to keep that stuff in-house and figure out a way to get the best out of your player. But I think at that time, there wasn’t as much support from the support staff … I was like, I can’t trust anyone else to give me the right information. I’m the one out there. It’s my career. So I just need to figure out a way.”
Khawaja’s first Asian tour to Sri Lanka in 2011 returned a couple of 20s. He was a spectator in India in 2013, with spots in the team opening up thanks to Mickey Arthur’s homework suspensions except that Khawaja was one of the players suspended. Instead Steve Smith was recalled to make 92, starting one of the game’s great scoring sprees. Back in Sri Lanka in 2016 Khawaja made three more starts and a duck, then played in Bangladesh in 2017 for one run in each innings.
His average in Asia was 14.62, his tally of five Tests too small a sample size to be decisive. But it was more about feel. In Galle he had the rare distinction of being dismissed twice in the same day, by the same bowler, in the same mode. He lasted six balls on the second morning. Australia got rolled, Sri Lanka batted and declared, Khawaja tried a nightwatchman, that didn’t work, so he went to the middle to be out first ball. The kryptonite was off-spinner Dilruwan Perera bowling straight at the left-hander’s stumps from around the wicket.
In Bangladesh, with then-captain Smith saying they were preparing him for a future India trip, Khawaja ran himself out second ball after a ricochet so meek that the wicketkeeper did the fielding. His second dismissal was a top-edged sweep. As in Sri Lanka, Australia lost the Test, got desperate, and dropped him.
Again the key was that he looked frazzled, whether by the spin, the noise, the chaos. Place that in a broader picture where his first 15 Tests away from home returned an average of 25 and one century in New Zealand, and it made sense to question whether he was good enough to change things.
That was why his 2018 opus in Dubai, saving a Test against Pakistan from an impossible position, was such a wonder. Reverse-sweeping the leg-spin of Yasir Shah out of the rough time and again, he made 85 and 141, batting nearly 13 hours including more than eight hours in the final innings. Injury kept him from the second match, and his next trip to Asia was his return to Pakistan this time last year.
Five innings, 496 runs, three times out. Another important 71 in a win in Sri Lanka. Then to India for what should have been a match-winning 81 on a tough surface in Delhi, what was a match-winning 60 on a worse one in Indore, and now this unbeaten 104 in Ahmedabad with the potential to add to it on the second day. Right this second, Khawaja’s Asian average since Dubai is 74.60.
The turnaround is dramatic, and what looks the most important thing to it is calm. Nothing frazzles Khawaja any more. In Pakistan last year all he did was bat, taking his time to squeeze the air out of contests, out of pitches, out of bowlers. His patience was incredible. In India this time around the pace has been more frenetic, built around the need to score before disaster strikes.
But after weeks of the latter, presented with a docile surface, Khawaja instantly adjusted to the former. He faced out so many dots that he was seeing static. Of 251 balls faced, he didn’t score from 198. Then in simple fashion he collected runs when he could go back to tuck square, or come forward and push one straight. When the occasional ball was in his spot, he accepted. A silken flick against Mohammad Shami, a drive from Ravichandran Ashwin that hit a paper-thin gap between short cover and a deeper mid-off.
Fifteen boundaries in 90 overs, the temperature pushing towards 40 degrees, and Australia needing him to bat time until the pitch deteriorates as much as they need his runs to build that first-innings lead. This is the Pakistan series on repeat, those long slow games. Khawaja is a chance to walk out on the second day and do it all again. With Smith a diminished force and Marnus Labuschagne an underperformer on this tour, Khawaja right now is Australia’s most important batter in these conditions. That is no longer any surprise at all.
