Rachel Khawaja; ‘I converted to Islam before we started our family’
Test cricketer Usman Khawaja and his wife Rachel are overjoyed to be on the path to parenthood, after a few years of personal and professional struggles. They both say religion is an important part of their lives.
U on Sunday
Don't miss out on the headlines from U on Sunday. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Usman and Rachel Khawaja had always wanted to start a family, so when they were waiting for their first pregnancy test, the cricketer couldn’t look away. “I was glued to the test,’’ Usman recalls.
“I was shaking it, looking at it five minutes later, I’d throw it in the bin and come back ten minutes later to see if it changed,” he laughs, joking that he understood why his wife didn’t want him around when she took subsequent tests.
The two pink lines didn’t appear for the couple straight away.
The ballerina that won a Wiggle’s heart
Emily Seebohm opens up on life with new love
Rachel tried to stay positive. But by November last year she was struggling with the negative result. It was a difficult time for the couple, with a troubling England tour for Usman, who was axed from the Australian Test team during the Ashes series in September after a hamstring injury ended his World Cup campaign.
He was in Perth, where he was playing for Australia A in a tour match against Pakistan, on November 10 when he woke up and noticed two missed calls from his wife.
The pair text constantly when the batsman is away for cricket, but phone calls are rare, so he knew something was off. He checked his inbox, and found a photo from his wife of a pregnancy test – and this time it was positive.
“I was really excited, and then you’re like, ‘I want to tell everyone’, but I can’t,’ ” Usman says, recalling the happy conversation with his wife.
The couple, who met through a friend in 2015, never had to ask each other if they wanted children when they started dating.
Usman, 33, could always see how maternal Rachel, 24, was, especially with his teammates’ children on cricket tours, and she had known from the beginning how important family was to the Australian and Queensland batsman.
For them, having a baby was a given, and a logical next step, having tied the knot in April 2018. But they had Usman’s cricketing schedule to contend with, including a four-month stint in England midway through the year for the Cricket World Cup and the Ashes series.
Rachel had sat down with a schedule early on, adamant that she didn’t want a due date to interrupt the series, if he were to make the Australian squad.
“Uzzy’s worked his whole career to tick off milestones like that,” Rachel says, prompting Usman to shake his head. “I was fine with it.
I would have happily come back … I was just ready to have a baby,” he says.
As it turned out, the baby news ending up coming at the perfect time for the cricketer, considering his challenging summer in the sport.
“It’s a nice little leveller. I was pretty good anyway, I’m pretty blessed with life and I’m always very grateful,’’ he says.
“I have a beautiful wife, I have a great family, both my family and Rachel’s family are great, and I love playing cricket and I was still playing cricket for Queensland, so I was very happy.
“And then having a baby on top of that, that’s something I’ve always wanted; family has always been something that’s on my mind, and I know family is going to last a lot longer than cricket will, too. So in my mind it’s probably more important in a lot of respects.”
His international career has ebbed and flowed since his eye-catching Test debut in Sydney in 2011 and he had stepped up in 2018 – in the absence of superstar batsmen Steve Smith and Dave Warner – before losing his spot in the squad this summer.
“I love playing cricket, don’t get me wrong, I’m as competitive as anyone and part of it (getting dropped) did suck, but at the same time there’s always good times, there’s always bad times and you just have to accept that and really truly be grateful for what you have,’’ he says.
“The pregnancy was a blessing for me.’’
With Rachel now 22 weeks pregnant, the couple are busily planning for the arrival of their first child in July when they speak to U on Sunday.
Coincidentally it will be the first winter Usman will be home in Brisbane after many years of travelling for cricket, and Rachel is feeling lucky that she’s had a remarkably smooth pregnancy so far.
They have decided to keep the sex of the child a surprise, picking out three boys’ names and three girls’ names – all Islamic names – so they can decide everything on the day.
“There’s not a lot of nice surprises in life,” Rachel says.
“I look forward to that moment where we can find out together, in that moment, and Uzzy can go out and tell all the family in the waiting room.”
It’s clear from their home, an expansive modern property in Brisbane’s south with stunning city views, that they – along with their much-loved cavalier king charles spaniel, LeBron – have already created a family life for themselves.
A large artwork of the Maleny landscape they bought after their wedding in the picturesque Sunshine Coast town hangs by the dining table.
Adjacent to that, in front of a their fireplace, hangs a black and white photo of New York,
a piece they were gifted after Usman popped the question there during a horse and cart ride on Rachel’s 21st birthday in 2016.
Around the corner is a gallery wall of photos taken of the couple from their travels. And nearby on the top level of the home, near the couple’s bedroom, their nursery, decorated in neutral colours, begins to take shape.
“We never actually said, ‘Do you want to have kids?’ I think it was just a given that we both wanted to have kids but we talked a lot about how (Usman) would want to raise kids, coming from two really different backgrounds and two totally different families,” Rachel says.
Usman is a Pakistani-born Muslim, the first of his religion to wear the baggy green cap, and Rachel was raised a Catholic Australian in Brisbane along with her two siblings.
In 2017, a year before they married, she converted to Islam, knowing how much Usman wanted to raise a family in the Islamic faith.
“That’s the only reason. I could have married Rachel as she was, as a Catholic,” Usman says.
“I always said to her that, ‘I want our kids to have parents that are going in the same direction’. That’s why we probably talked about it really early because I needed to suss this out.”
Rachel, who is still learning about the religion, admits it has been a learning curve and will continue to be.
But she is hopeful their families can share in each other’s festivities, swapping presents from Santa on Christmas Day and having her family join Usman’s for Eid twice a year.
“It’ll be one belief system but two cultures so it’ll be a little bit different to the childhood he had and it’ll be very different to the childhood I had,” she says.
“Once they are old enough we will obviously be able to explain the reason behind it and hopefully they will understand and enjoy it.”
Usman laughs, “Some spoilt kids they will be – two Eids and a Christmas”.
When asked what kind of parent he wants to be, the cricketer pauses.
“That is a hard question,” he says.
“I’ve always said to Rachel, the most important thing in my life is religion and for me I just want to be a parent that teaches my son or daughter about religious obligations and about being a good person and trying to make them the best people they can be. That’s what I think is the role of a parent. You never know until you do it, so ask us again in two years’ time.”
At 33, Usman feels he has at least three or four years left in his cricketing career, and both he and Rachel hope that their child will be old enough to experience joining dad on the pitch during post-game celebrations.
“When I see all the kids after a game run out to see their dad, it gets me every time,” Rachel smiles, adding how nice it had been to have the support of the Australian cricket fraternity since announcing their pregnancy in February.
“Everyone has been really excited for us; they know how much we wanted to start a family.”
But, when it comes to whether his future child will join him in the nets, Usman cracks a smile.
“I keep joking to Rach that I want to turn the kids into golfers or tennis players, not cricket players,” he says.
“I’ve been doing cricket my whole life so I wouldn’t mind doing something else. But it might be hard if they are growing up and all they know is their dad used to play cricket; there’s great opportunities now in cricket for both males and females.
“I’m a big believer in sport so no matter what we have, I’ll be pushing them toward sport, whatever sport that may be.”
The couple had just arrived home in Brisbane from the Sydney premiere of Amazon Prime series The Test when they spoke to U on Sunday. The series allowed cameras to go inside the Australian locker room, with a heated argument between Usman and coach Justin Langer in the nets making headlines.
“I’m still very close to Justin. Every time I see him I say, ‘G’day’, and give him a hug, it’s fine,” Usman says.
“We are all teammates and a lot of us are friends. We’ve shared a lot of good times and bad times and that’s what makes it good – it’s shared experiences.”
He’s feeling positive about the upcoming summer of cricket as a new dad, whether that means batting his way back into the Test squad or leading the charge for Queensland.
“No matter what happens, I just try to do my best,’’ he says.
“I train as hard as I ever have now and I’ll do that until the end, until I stop playing.
“As soon as I stop training hard, as soon as I start taking shortcuts, then that’s my time to go. But at the moment, my body’s feeling great and I still feel like I’ve got a lot of good years left in me.”
Usman says he didn’t try to look too far ahead, describing himself as a “process orientated” person instead of a “goal orientated” person.
“For me, I love the process. I love trying to get better, even now at 33,” he says.
“I’ve been playing cricket professionally for 12 years now; the process of getting better still gets me out of bed.
“I’m wanting to do more, wanting to do extra, and I think if I have that mindset, which I’ve had for a long time, then there’s still a lot of good stuff to come.”
His cricket future might be undefined but as he cradles his wife’s growing bump, which has only recently popped, he’s content with whatever comes next.
“There’s always more to life,” he says.
‘What the f*** is wrong with you?’: Dinner party turns chaotic
It started so well, but then Frances Whiting made a decision that threw her dinner party into chaos.
Do you know what your love language is? Mine is surprising
Frances Whiting was recently asked in a panel discussion what her ‘love language is’. Turns out she does have one, and it took her by surprise.