Khawaja makes retirement call
Usman Khawaja has made a call on his future after months of speculation.
Source: Network Ten
Usman Khawaja’s Test career will end in Sydney, the veteran batter confirmed on Friday morning.
After months of speculation around his future, Khawaja fronted a press conference in Sydney announcing he would retire at the end of the Ashes series.
The 39-year-old revealed he offered to retire during the previous summer but Australia coach Andrew McDonald urged him to keep playing.
Khawaja expressed frustration at former players and the media for “attacking” him in recent years and ushering him towards retirement.
Khawaja’s future in Test cricket has remained one of the hottest topics of this summer’s Ashes series, after he turned 39 last month.
“It felt like attacking. It was disappointing,” Khawaja told reporters on Friday morning.
“Saying I was selfish for staying on. But I wasn’t staying on for myself.
“I guess moving into this series, I had an inkling this would be the last series.
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“I’m glad I can go out on my own terms.”
Khawaja thanked his family and mentor Bill Anderson, adding he hoped to have inspired youngsters around the country.
“You can do whatever you want. You’ve just got to keep trying,” he said.
“‘I’m a proud Muslim coloured boy from Pakistan who was told that he would never play for the Australian cricket team. Look at me now. And you can do the same.”
Khawaja struggled with a back issue early in the Ashes series and missed the Brisbane Test. Photo: AAP
The left-hander’s decision means he will finish with 88 Tests to his name, having already risen to be Australia’s 15th greatest run-scorer in history with 6,206.
The call to walk away means the Sydney Test will also turn into something of a farewell party for the 39-year-old, with the series decided and Australia 3-1 up.
Khawaja’s Sydney exit is fitting, given so much of his career has been based around the city he moved to as a four-year-old from Islamabad.
He made his debut at the SCG in 2011 against England, scoring a stylish 37 that offered Australian fans hope at the end of the worst home summer this century.
Khawaja moved to Sydney from Pakistan as a child, and scored his first Ashes century there with 171 against England in 2018.
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It was also at that the SCG where he revived his career as a 35-year-old, scoring twin centuries against England when Travis Head missed a Test in 2022 through Covid.
That prompted one of the great late-career revivals, hitting seven centuries in his first two years back in the side.
Khawaja’s position had come under more scrutiny this summer, after being unable to open in the first Ashes Test Perth due to back spasms then missing the Brisbane Test with the injury.
He was then initially left out in Adelaide before Steve Smith’s vertigo allowed him to return, before an 82 in the first innings ensured he would stay in the side for the fourth Test in Melbourne.
His retirement announcement makes Khawaja just the second player to walk away while still in the Australian Test team in the last decade, after David Warner’s exit two summers ago.
Khawaja would become Australia’s oldest Test player in 40 years at the SCG over the next week.
Usman Khawaja’s Test career:
Tests: 87
Runs: 6206
Average: 43.39
Centuries: 16
Half-centuries: 28
-AAP
