He’s prolific, pioneering, easy on the eye. But Usman Khawaja should retire now

2 months ago 5

Opinion

December 16, 2025 — 10.59am

Follow our live blog of the third Ashes Test in Adelaide from 9.30am Wednesday

Usman Khawaja has been an ornament to Australian cricket, but the time has come to put him back on the mantelpiece.

To say so is not to downplay his contribution as a prolific top-of-the-order late-career run-maker, nor to forget how easy on the eye he was to watch his languid pomp. Those attributes stand forever.

Usman Khawaja is nearing the end of his career.

It is certainly not to diminish Khawaja’s standing as a pioneering figure in Australian cricket history. He is the first Pakistani and first Muslim to play for Australia, proudly so, impactfully so. As such, he has been unafraid to stand on toes. In so many ways, he’s widened his stance and our horizons. Even those who disagreed with him could not deny that he was thought-provoking.

He has a platform, and he’s sought to use it for good. But that platform was built on runs, and it is now crumbling. It’s not that it can’t be rebuilt – unlikely as that is – but that it should not be. A man has to know his time and his place.

Cricket educes in Australians a sentimentality not much evident in any other endeavour. Seemingly, now is always as good as it is ever going to get. It means there is always resistance to change even when change begs. It also means the Test team often goes grey in the service. This one is before our very eyes.

When David Warner retired almost two years ago, there was a sense that Usman Khawaja had to be retained for stability’s sake, although they were merely two months apart in age. Then, at least, he was still making solid, if increasingly laborious runs.

Selectors like to give the impression that they are always working to a long and insightful plan. But as often as not, the driver of change is serendipitous accident. This is especially true of the emergence of opening pairs; the latest is the makeshift union of Travis Head and Jake Weatherald.

Don’t forget it was accident that made Khawaja a Test opener in the first place, namely the bout of COVID contracted by Head during the last Ashes series here. Now accident – to wit, a back injury – might and probably should foreclose on his Test career.

For three years after his recall, Khawaja made plentiful and important runs. Initially at sea on the subcontinent, he transformed himself into a specialist there. As recently as February, he made 232 in a Test in Sri Lanka.

It was an outlier. To be fair, if we are to exclude that innings from an assessment of his recent form, we should also overlook the Tests in the Caribbean in mid-year, which were played on sporty pitches and every batsman struggled.

Usman Khawaja just before his 2011 Test debut at the SCG.

Calculated this selective way, from the start of the series against India last summer, Khawaja has averaged 16. The sequence looks ominously like the last year of Matthew Hayden’s eminent career in 2008-09. The point is that even great careers must end sometime, and as often as not against obdurate wills. Hayden in his time was agonisingly reluctant to admit that he had hit the buffers.

Not only have Khawaja’s runs thinned, but his scoring rate has slowed. His career strike rate was more than 50, but over the past two years has dwindled to barely 44. Sometimes, his studied progress has worked for the team’s good. Just as often, it has been a drag.

Breaks fall one way, then the other. Now, they’re mounting against Khawaja. We’ll do him the favour of treating his infamous rounds of golf in Perth as without prejudice in the fact that he injured his back early in the first Test. Nonetheless, it means that those six balls he faced so gingerly in that Test constitute all his match batting in the past seven weeks. England have been torn from pillar to post for such inactivity.

Thrice, Khawaja has betrayed an uncharacteristically snippy mindset. The first was when he called the Perth pitch “a piece of shit”. It was unbecoming. The second was when he said he loved playing for Australia and was working as hard as ever, no matter what people said. Everyone loves playing for Australia, nearly everyone works hard at it, but they’re not the criteria, or else we’d all be in with a chance. You have to produce.

Thirdly, Khawaja said he was “still valued by the team”. That exposes the still clubby environment of the Australian squad. His teammates might want him, but he’s playing for his country. When he’s wearing the Baggy Green, we’re the jury of his peers.

Khawaja was a breath of fresh air when he came into the Test team at the end of the wretched summer of 2010-11. His progress was fitful for a long time, but when he finally nailed down a place, he gave his country yeoman service in artisanal manner, a rare blend. He’s made his unique stamp, but now either he or the selectors on his behalf should leave it at that. His legacy is safe; he will always be admirable.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.