BRISBANE: As the sun went down in Brisbane on Thursday, there was an immediate shift in the mood of the city. If it was hot when the India and Australia teams trained during the day time, a cool evening breeze took over. Suddenly, like they say, the weather was lovely. The temperature dropped to the low twenties, comfortable by any standards, and with the wind blowing, it was a perfect setting for a stroll around the city. This, in fact, had been the weather in the past week or so and is expected to continue when the third Test match begins on Saturday.
Heat or no heat. Wind or no wind. The one person who would be feeling at home would be Usman Khawaja.
This is the city he embraced as home to further his cricketing career. A little background would add spice to the story.
For someone who had been hailed as batting prodigy, Khawaja had a rocky start to his international career. He grew up the ranks fast and became the first Muslim and Pakistan-born cricketer to play for Australia. But after a sub-par first year, Khawaja needed to make a decision on whether he would let go off the star-studded New South Wales set up for a place where he could grow as a batter with more responsibilities.
NSW as they call it had some big names among the ranks -- Shane Watson, Phil Hughes, Steve Smith, Simon Katich, and Brad Haddin at full strength with David Warner and Michael Clarke too around -- the scope of Khawaja carving out extra space for himself was not going to be easy.
So he chose Queensland and Brisbane his adopted home.
While not much changed for Khawaja as a person instantly, on field, it bore results. He turned into a leading run-scorer for Queensland in 2012-13, and that was just the beginning. Whether it was for Queensland or Valley District Cricket Club (who he played for), Khawaja scored runs.
Andrew Gode, who was Khawaja’s first captain at the VDCC and is a friend for more than a decade, explains: “Whenever he played with us, we always knew what we were going to get. We were going to get a bloke who was going to go out and basically try and score runs. He is one of those characters where you don't really know necessarily whether it's going good or bad. I think that's a really, really good trait to have.”
For the longest time, that ‘not knowing whether things are going good or bad with him’ caused a bit of a headache for Khawaja. On the field, he is this quiet, unassuming person who gets into a zone and just wants to bat. His extremely gifted timing in combination with this trait often times led to people thinking he is “too relaxed.”
“He's one of my favourite people to bat with, because he's just going about his thing, and he's nearly more worried about how you're going, making sure you're all squeezed. ‘Don't worry, I've got this under control. How are you going? Let's get you through’. And, all of a sudden, your partnership's 40, then it's 70, and all of a sudden you're both 70-odd out,” says Gode.
Over the years, in and out of the national side meant Khawaja learnt despite his love to just bat, cricket will not define who he is. He is a pilot, an MBA Student with Bond University, found love with Rachel, who is a broadcaster, became a family man. Proud of his Pakistani heritage, Khawaja found his voice to stand up for not just his identity but also the issues he cares for. He has expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian people time and again in the ongoing war against Israel in Gaza.
Ahead of the home series against Pakistan last year, he wanted to wear cricket boots with “all lives are equal” and “freedom is a human right” written on them in the colours of the Palestinian flag. But with the ICC stopped him as they do not allow political messaging. Khawaja later explained in a video that he wasn’t taking sides. "I already felt my life wasn’t equal to others when I was growing up. But luckily for me, I have never lived in a world where the lack of inequality was life or death,” he said, before adding, “To me, personally, it doesn’t matter what race, religion or culture you are – but if me saying ‘all lives are equal’ has offended people to the point of – these people obviously don’t believe in what I have written.”
Gode believes that Khawaja finding his identity and voice has played an important role in him becoming the person he is now. “The way he stands up for what he believes is right, is so important. It's probably something we don't see a lot of nowadays. I think everyone's quite scared of having an opinion. He's got opinions on things. And you know what, more often than not, they're probably right,” he says.
“That might rub people the wrong way, but I guarantee he's only coming from a place to try to make the world better. It's a world for everyone. It is. We're living in a world, and probably even in a country at the moment, where there's probably a lot of division and a lot of people not being as culturally diverse as they probably should be.
“Someone like Usman is at the forefront where he's trying to only do things for a good reason. There's no negativity towards it. He's standing up for things like the issues that we're facing in Gaza at the moment. He's obviously really well connected to that, and all the things he's saying and all the things he's standing up for are for a really great cause,” he adds.
His off the field journey brought a turn of tide on the field as well with Khawaja becoming one of the leading openers in the world since 2022. From being all but done with his career, he turned it around to be among the top three openers in the world, it has been a joyride for the veteran. This summer, however, hasn’t started great with consecutive failures against India and is under pressure to put up a big score.
While Gode says that Khawaja is taking every Test he plays as a bonus and doesn’t, he has no doubt about Khawaja feeling at home batting in The Gabba. “Oh yeah, he'll love it. I know he obviously has Pakistan heritage. He grew up in Sydney. But he considers himself a Queenslander. So I guarantee it'll be one big celebration if he hits a hundred this week.”
Khawaja and Australia would like nothing more.