Two years back on this day, Usman Khawaja started to recover from what was a mishap in the training session, where he completely tore his ligament because of an awkward attempt to catch the ball. After that, the batsmen thought that he would never come back, recover and play for the national side, as reported by ESPNCricinfo.
Khawaja thought that his career ended with the serious knee injury, but it was only a year after when the player recovered and came into the national side and performed better than anyone, all thanks to his 144 on the Boxing Day Test against West Indies. This is the third consecutive test in which Khawaja has scored a century. He surely is Australia’s bombshell right now.
This is what Khawaja had to say, “It's a funny thing, life, you never know what's going to happen, this time last year I probably wasn't in a very good spot. I was just trying to stay positive. I knew I wasn't going to be playing cricket for a while. I wasn't expecting in my wildest dreams that I'd be playing for Australia again and playing a Boxing Day Test match.”
“I'm grateful every time I go out and play now. I've been through probably the worst injury you can in sport, in terms of time period out of the game. For me every time I'm out there playing, I love it. I make sure whatever's happening, I'm enjoying it, because you can't play for Australia forever, you can't play cricket forever. You've just got to enjoy it as much as you can.”
Try not to get too far ahead of myself: Khawaja
After his magnificent 109 in the Big Bash League, Khawaja now has 4 consecutive hundreds in his last 4 games. He has not been dismissed for less than 100 since October in any format of the game. His return from a hamstring injury brought problems for the Australian selection committee as they now had a confusion to choose between Marsh and Joe Burns, the spot won by the latter at the end.
Khawaja said that he was ecstatic after his innings on his first Boxing Day after he scored a century and had a 250 run partnership with opener Joe Burns.
He added, “"I try not to get too far ahead of myself because every time you go out you're on a duck. I'll enjoy this moment: a hundred on Boxing Day, my first Boxing Day, a 250-run partnership with Burnsy. I couldn't have asked for a lot more on day one. I think we're both a bit disappointed that we didn't get massive ones but at the end of the day we've done what we needed to do to hopefully set up this first innings for Australia.”
Usman mentioned about how it was difficult to bat on in the earlier part of the innings and praised Holder and debutant Carlos Braithwaite for bowling off the seam. He thought that there was little swing, but getting only 1 wicket down was much of an achievement for his side.
He said, “Early on it was quite tough to bat out there," he said. "We found it really hard to penetrate the infield in the first session. At one point I thought it was my bat - I thought I had a broken bat. But it was just the wicket was slow, they bowled pretty well in the first session. When we came out after lunch even after the first over we realised the wicket had quickened up. That second session we got a lot of runs.”
WI bowlers bowled in good areas: Burns
Australian selectors had a good boxing day as their selections of both Khawaja and Burns were justified after both of them scored centuries and gave the chance to attack at later stages. Khawaja scored 144 and Joe Burns fell for 128.
Burns, who had a good start to the summer with a century failed to impress the selectors later on, but now that he has a century to his name after being selected in the playing 11, it looks settled that he will be partnering David Warner from here on.
Burns said, “Batting day one of a Test match is obviously a lot different to third innings, I think when they bowled in good areas it was quite tough work as well. That's the satisfying thing. We went through some long periods where we didn't score too many runs. But just to hold them off, and pick and choose our moments when we were looking to attack.
"The hundred I made in Brisbane was a lot different to the hundred I made today... It's two ends of the spectrum. To back up the performance from Brisbane and to go out today and make another hundred, it's really satisfying. My job is to do that week in, week out."
Australia stand in a comfortable position after the first day of the Boxing Day Test match against West Indies. They are on 345/3 with Steve Smith and Adam Voges on the crease following the centuries by Khawaja and Burns.
