Ashes 2019: Tim Paine explains reason behind Usman Khawaja axing ahead of fourth Test 

What's the story?

Australia skipper Tim Paine has explained the reason behind the management's decision to drop Usman Khawaja for the fourth Test of the ongoing Ashes series. According to Paine, the southpaw hasn't scored as many runs as 'he and the team would've liked.'

In case you didn't know...

Following their historic victory in the first Test, Australia drew and lost the second and third Test matches respectively, as a Ben Stokes-inspired English side put an end to a barren spell of eight winless games against their bitter rivals by clinching a one-wicket victory at Headingley.

Meanwhile, much like the entire batting order barring Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne, Usman Khawaja has endured a torrid time in the middle against the moving Dukes ball, having accumulated a paltry 122 runs in six innings thus far. The 32-year-old has recorded substandard scores of 13, 40, 36, 2, 8 and 23.

The heart of the matter

Owing to his major slump in form, Khawaja was omitted from Australia's 12-man squad ahead of the fourth Test.

Skipper Paine, reflecting on the decision to omit Khawaja, revealed why the management opted to take a different approach.

"Usman's obviously a key player in our side batting at No. 3 and he hasn't scored the runs that he or we would like. So with Steve Smith coming back it was a tough decision to make on Usman, but we think he's still got a lot of cricket left in him, he's had a very good Test record over his career, and we expect he will bounce back pretty strongly."

He continued:

"It's a good thing for us that we've got a player of Usman's quality on the sidelines, it means we're getting our team to where we want to be and we want our selectors making hard decisions."

Marcus Harris, who replaced the under-fire Cameron Bancroft in the previous Test, endured a tough outing as well. However, Paine feels it would be hard to drop the opener after just one match.

"Marcus came in, played one Test, I think it would have been hard to then leave him out straightaway.

"He played okay, he would've liked a few more runs as well, but we think Harry's had a decent start to his Test-match career and we think he's got a lot of talent and we think he's going to convert that into a lot of Test runs."

7 - Usman Khawaja scored a century (117) in his last First Class innings at Old Trafford (in 2014 for @lancscricket v @YorkshireCCC), 4 of his other 6 First Class innings at the Manchester venue have seen him fail to score more than 2 though (1, 24, 1, 2, 10, 0). Omitted. #Ashes pic.twitter.com/VgbcdIkFzS

— OptaJim (@OptaJim) September 3, 2019

What's next?

The fourth Test commences later today, with the urn at stake.

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