The wait is over; Usman Khawaja has arrived.
With the early wickets of Joe Burns and Dave Warner in what looked like good bowling conditions, the New Zealand bowlers would have been confident of running through the Australian batting line up just as the Aussie bowlers had done earlier in the first innings.
But in their way would stand Australia’s new batting colossus Usman Khawaja and by the time his latest 140-run batting masterpiece was complete the Aussie’s where in full control of the match.
The batting talent of Khawaja was evident early in his career playing his first Test in 2011 but turning scores of 20s and 30s into hundreds was his biggest challenge, it took the 29-year-old a move from New South Wales to Queensland, 94 first class games and over 6000 runs to acquire all the tools necessary to succeed at international level.
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Khawaja’s batting in this year’s Big Bash League had to be seen to be believed. Although only playing four games, he scored 345 runs with a strike rate of 163 and scored two centuries. His aggression and improved ball striking made him nearly impossible to bowl to and at times during the tournament he simply looked a class above everyone else.
Khawaja has now stamped himself as a permanent member of Australia’s batting line-up in all forms of the game. All great cricket teams have a stable batting line up with established batsmen that consistently score runs. With Steve Smith, Dave Warner and now Usman Khawaja Australia have three batting pillars of which to build their batting line-up around.
Australian head selector Rod Marsh came under heavy criticism recently when Khawaja was originally left out of the one day squad to take on New Zealand. But with all is reasons and excuses washed down the river of runs Khawaja has made lately the selectors have no choice but to make him one of the first pick in all three forms of the game.
With Australia looking to assemble a batting line-up capable of making enough runs to win an Ashes series in England against the swinging ball. Khawaja has the technique and now the confidence to be a big part of those plans.
So although it’s had a few delays and is running a bit late, it’s all aboard the Usman Khawaja train.
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