Crunch time: Usman Khawaja struggles expose huge issue for Australia

Usman Khawaja has underwhelmed so far this series. Damning statistics underline just how much he’s struggled, but they also expose a wider problem for the Australian Test team.

Australia head to the Boxing Day Test with a new opening combination. After a torrid time against Jasprit Bumrah – four dismissals at an average of just 3.75 – Nathan McSweeney has been taken out of the firing line, replaced by 19-year-old rising star Sam Konstas.

There has been, rightly, a lot of scrutiny on the decision to drop the South Australia opener. If he was the right person to open at Perth, he was the right person to see out the series. Dropping someone after three Tests makes it plain that the blame lies with the selectors, not the player themselves.

However, in some ways the concerns for Australia openers is not limited to McSweeney. So far this series, Usman Khawaja has underwhelmed with 63 runs in five visits.

More concerningly though, has been a sense of impermanence, a skittishness we haven’t seen in his game since he returned to the side at the top of the order.

If McSweeney had started more strongly, the pressure on Khawaja would have been just as substantial.

Khawaja’s record against Bumrah had always been quite good. Before this series, he’d faced 154 deliveries from the Indian quick, and hadn’t been dismissed, albeit scoring just 43 runs. Yet this series his performance was only marginally better than his junior partner’s, with four dismissals in 71 balls, averaging 4.25.

It is a very tough task facing a bowler of this quality in this sort of form, with a new ball, but nobody would pretend that this is good enough.

The medium term trends for Khawaja are not awful. Since the World Test Championship final he’s averaging 34, below his high standards – he’d averaged 70 in the two years prior – but by no means catastrophic. One century in 32 innings is a drought without doubt, but players do go through these slumps.

Australia will be looking for a lift from Usman Khawaja. Picture: Josh Chadwick/Getty Images

Teen debutant Sam Konstas. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

If you were being critical, you would say that Khawaja has become just a bit too easy to bowl to. During this slump, he’s still dominating short balls in the way we’ve become accustomed to, averaging over 70 and scoring briskly. But bowlers know to avoid this now, and keep the ball full – against which he’s averaging 23. Move the ball back into him and Khawaja remains as solid as ever, but swing it away and his average drops from 53 to 19. His dismissals have become a little too repetitive in nature, and opposition attacks have cottoned on.

Optimism is still knocking around though. Khawaja’s record at the SCG is ridiculous, an average of 104 from eight Tests, with four centuries. But the situation Australia have found themselves in is one emblematic of a wider issue – they have got their transition planning wrong.

Sam Konstas may be a generational talent, and it seems more than likely that he’ll have success in Test cricket. But nobody would say that mid series, with a trophy on the line, against perhaps the best fast bowler of all time, is the right time to blood a new batter, let alone the youngest man to ever open the batting for Australia.

We’re seeing it with the bowling attack as well. With Josh Hazlewood seemingly out of the remainder of the series, the man called up to potentially replace him is Jhye Richardson, a 28-year-old who has played just three Test matches. Brendan Doggett, who’s also been knocking around the set-up this summer, is 30 years old without a Test cap to his name.

There are reasons to feel sympathetic for the Australian set-up in this regard. They play a remarkably low number of Test matches, particularly away from home: in the last five years England have played 36 overseas Tests, to Australia’s 18. The dominance of the Big Three dictates that India and England, the biggest rivals around whom you plan and aim to peak for, are always around – five of the last eight summers have seen one or the other visit Australian shores. The opportunity to rotate in relatively consequence-free matches, if such a concept exists within the WTC structure, has been limited.

But the opportunities they have had, they have ignored. Whether it’s the experiment of Steve Smith opening the batting, or the reluctance to pick any of the non big four quicks through rotation, Australia have left themselves vulnerable. In very different ways, the two men walking out to open the batting at the MCG on Boxing Day represent gambles, one on the undeniable talent of a youngster, the other on the hope Khawaja has one last job in him. Whether the dice land for them or not, they shouldn’t have found themselves in this situation.

Originally published as Crunch time: Usman Khawaja struggles expose huge issue for Australia