Australia vs Sri Lanka, first Test: Usman Khawaja on overcoming stigma

Usman Khawaja learnt the value of controlling his emotions as a child, but he wants to set the record straight - beneath that cool exterior is as driven a cricketer as any, writes DANIEL CHERNY.

Usman Khawaja isn’t excited about this Test series.

That’s no disrespect to Sri Lanka. The hosts shouldn’t take it personally.

“I’ve never felt the feeling of excitement before any game of cricket. It’s not like excitement because it’s just what I do,” Khawaja tells this masthead as he sits at the Australian team’s hotel in Galle.

An important distinction needs to be made though. As he enters the home straight of what has proven to be an exceptional international career, the opener wants you to know that while he mightn’t be excited about what is coming, he cares about it deeply.

Don’t let an outwardly relaxed nature fool you. Nor an ability to pacify, evidenced when he got in between Sam Konstas and Virat Kohli as the boiling point neared in the middle of the MCG on Boxing Day morning.

It was not always so. As a child growing up in Sydney, Khawaja would go to White City to play tennis. The youngster had some McEnroe-esque tendencies.

“I was a really bad loser in tennis. Chuck my racquet, blow up, cry when I lost,” Khawaja said.

One day, his father Tariq decided that enough was enough.

“My dad just gave me a sitting down. He’s like, ‘you kind of can’t act like this. It’s disrespectful.’”

It was then Khawaja assumed his pokerface. An outward sense of calm that belies the brooding competitor within, and gave the impression - even to those who should have probably known better - that he didn’t want it enough.

AUsman Khawaja with his family, including father Tariq who taught him the value of a poker face. Picture: Phil Hillyard

“When I first came to first-class cricket, I kind of curbed my emotions by then. I’d get out and just kind of put my bat down. I’d do my gloves. I’d be internally just seething for an hour, or a day sometimes, and then I’d move past. But I remember a couple of times I heard ‘oh yeah Uzzie, does he care when he gets out?’ I remember one of the selectors said that at one point.”

Khawaja doesn’t want to out the selector who made the remark. But he supposes that his concerted efforts to keep cool reinforced stereotypes about “lazy” subcontinental cricketers.

“I think it kind of went against me. Because I wasn’t throwing my bat everywhere, people were like ‘oh he just doesn’t care,” Khawaja said.

Usman Khawaja on how people perceive him.

“I say this to people all the time, when they see someone on the field and they’re like, overly out there, or you can see them like blowing up, or something’s happening, they’re like, ‘oh yeah, look at him, he’s just a competitor.’

“And I’m like, No, he’s not a competitor, or he or she’s not a competitor. They just don’t know how to control their emotions. That’s the difference. There’s no one this level who I believe is more competitive when you talk about the top echelon of players, they are all competitive. You cannot be consistently performing in this game unless you’re super-competitive.

“People just see what’s out there outwardly. Like, no, that guy’s just not in control of his emotions.”

Khawaja may not have the frontfacing obsessive streak of Marnus Labuschagne, is not a streetfighter in the David Warner mould and has shown much broader interests than Steve Smith.

But beneath the surface, the ageing legs are still pedalling.

“The amount of work I put into my cricket, people can say whatever they want. There’s no way that I can still be playing cricket at 38 years of age without doing a lot. I still do minimum three gym sessions a week when I’m not playing cricket, no one sees that.

“I’m probably more relentless on it now than I was when I was younger, but it’s always the stuff that people don’t see.”

Usman Khawaja celebrates with his family after Australia win the Border-Gavaskar trophy in Sydney. Photo: Tom Parrish

So what drives the man who this summer became Australia’s oldest Test cricketer since Steve Waugh more than two decades ago?

The lure of winning. That’s what gets him excited.

“I still love competing, if you know what I mean. So it’s like the excitement is there, but I still love competing. I still love playing the game with my teammates. Still love winning. That hasn’t changed.

“So the competitive aspect of succeeding and winning is probably what has always driven me throughout my career.

“And the thing I like the most about being in a team game is, I still get excited about winning, prospect of winning a series, obviously the big carrot after it with a World Test Championship, which I think all the boys, if you talk about excited, is as close as you get to excited for me. That’s the real big one.”

Originally published as Australia vs Sri Lanka, first Test: Usman Khawaja on overcoming stigma