Usman Khawaja the cricketer, activist ... and politician?

It’s the exact moment the calamari is being served during our lunch that Usman Khawaja chooses to regale me with his experience of vomiting all over his hotel bathroom that morning.

“I got home to the hotel, and I’m like ‘It’s coming up, I think it’s coming up’ so I started running, running, running, open the door … ‘It’s coming up’,” he explains in gruesome, painstaking detail. The culprit? Dodgy chicken he had cooked himself the night before.

Lunch With Usman Khawaja at 6Head restaurant, The Rocks.Credit: Louise Kennerley

“After we finish the food, I’ll show you the photo of the bathroom I took.”

Small mercies.

The reigning ICC Men’s Test Cricketer of the Year and I are dining at Sydney’s 6Head in The Rocks, just a couple of days after Australia were bundled out of the T20 World Cup, held in the West Indies and United States. Khawaja didn’t play in that squad, but he travelled over there to watch the tournament – including the sell-out match between India and Pakistan in a new, purpose-built stadium in New York City.

Cricket has historically failed to make inroads in the saturated sports landscape of the United States, but in the lead-up to the World Cup there was plenty of buzz over the India v Pakistan match, and how it could function as a kind of beachhead for the game domestically.

Usman Khawaja, the reigning ICC Men’s Test Cricketer of the Year.Credit: AP

Khawaja, who has family in the US whom he has visited regularly throughout his life, says there’s no doubt that cricket is growing rapidly in the country.

“When I was younger, none of my cousins had any idea about cricket,” he explains. “In the last six or seven years … all of them are watching it. I reckon the reason is because it’s now on TV. When I was younger, it wasn’t on cable. Now they can watch it at the touch of a finger – that’s how you get kids in the game.”

Cricket broadcasting rights were a major talking point during this year’s World Cup. For the first time, the rights to the tournament were snapped up in Australia by Amazon Prime as part of a growing push by the streaming giant to grow its sports portfolio. But the fact most Australians have been conditioned over decades to expect cricket on either a free-to-air network or Fox Sports (and more recently Kayo) led to suggestions from some commentators that the public didn’t even know the tournament was happening.

The shake-up of sports rights happening across the world is inevitable as legacy media companies that have historically held the keys to the kingdom face increased pressure from streamers such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and Paramount+. And while that kind of fragmentation does come with a risk of diminished audiences in the short term, Khawaja (an ambassador for Amazon Prime) believes that the overall increase in money flowing through to the game is a net positive.

Lunch With Usman Khawaja at 6Head restaurant, The Rocks. Credit: Louise Kennerley

“Cricket is a business. There’s an exchange – cricketers are not playing for free,” he says. “So I find it weird that people talk about the paywall issue when it’s been going on for years. Sure, over summer the games are on free-to-air, and so are the Ashes because of the obvious historic value, but international games have always been paywalled.

“An organisation like Cricket Australia, if they’re offered $700 million by a free-to-air company, and another company behind a paywall offers $1 billion [for the rights], it would be unethical for them not to take it – especially on behalf of the players.”

Amazon’s foray into sport appears here to stay, at least for a while, with the streamer holding the rights for international cricket fixtures through to the 2027 season and this month securing the broadcast rights to the currently under way US-based Twenty20 Major League for Australia and New Zealand audiences.

When our food arrives, Khawaja shifts gears from sports rights to the tale of his upset stomach. Because of his current delicate appetite, we don’t go overboard on the ordering – we split calamari, prawns and bread for starters, while he opts for a burger for his main and steers me towards a steak.

Lunch With Usman Khawaja at 6Head restaurant, The Rocks. Credit: Louise Kennerley

He picked the restaurant both because of the stunning view of Circular Quay, and his penchant for its rib eye. The owner is good friends with someone his parents go to mosque with in Parramatta, which is how Khawaja first found out about the place.

The week before we met, Khawaja spoke to my colleague, Dan Brettig, about Australia’s boycott of Afghanistan’s cricket (outside of international tournaments) – a protest aimed at the Taliban’s treatment of women. Khawaja said he was sympathetic to both sides of the issue, but on balance believed Australia should resume playing Afghanistan.

“You’re depriving the population of its love for the game, and it’s a bit hypocritical we don’t play them ... but we let their players in the Big Bash – because it makes a lot of money.”

When I ask if he thinks Australia would be less interested in the boycott if playing Afghanistan was a big earner, his answer is emphatic.

“Definitely. I also don’t disagree with CA saying, ‘All right, we need to take a stand.’ But you can do that while playing. The Taliban do not care whether Cricket Australia stops playing against Afghanistan. If you look at the history of the Taliban, they could not care about what the Western world thinks. Are you actually going to make a difference? I don’t think so. All you’re doing is hurting the Afghans.”

He pauses, looks at me with a wry grin and says, “Funnily enough, people keep telling me that politics and cricket don’t mix.”

It’s a reference to the backlash Khawaja continues to receive for speaking out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Last year the ICC prevented him from displaying the symbol of a dove on his bat, and the slogan “All lives are equal” on his shoes. The disconnect between his attempt to make a political statement, and Australia’s deeply political boycott of Afghanistan is obvious to him.

“As soon as you play an international sport, politics and sport mix. Cricket is an international sport. We go to Kirribilli House every year – you’re telling me politics and cricket don’t mix?”

Khawaja says that speaking up about political issues such as the war in Gaza didn’t come naturally to him. When he was young, he was worried about the public perception of him and his brand.

“I was trying to assimilate into Australian cricket culture in my first few years. I was trying to fit in – probably so they would stop dropping me so much,” he says with a laugh. “But as I got older, I got more comfortable in my own skin. And to be honest, I just couldn’t really look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t speak up.”

What prompted the shift?

“I’ve always stayed away from international politics, but for me, this wasn’t about international politics, it was about human rights. To me, it came down to one crucial reason: if the same thing was happening to a populace of white people, the response would be totally different. It’s happening to people who are brown-skinned, much like myself, so I knew the feeling – the kind of feeling like your life isn’t as valuable as someone else’s. Hence, my shoes said ‘all lives are equal’.”

Throughout our conversation about Gaza, Khawaja regularly brings up what he believes is unfair media coverage – coverage that treats the lives of Palestinians as less than the lives of other victims because of their skin colour and religion. It’s something he identified as a younger person as well.

“People think I’ve just started thinking about this since October 7. I haven’t. I’ve been thinking about this since I was a kid watching Yasser Arafat. I got fed whatever was in the media, but I knew the truth. I knew they [Palestinians] were living under an apartheid system and being oppressed. Now everyone can see it first-hand.

“I didn’t want to look back on my career and think I didn’t stand up for that because I was more worried about myself than other people.”

The bill at 6Head.

In the week following our lunch, former Labor senator Fatima Payman sensationally quit the party over its position on Palestinian statehood, leading to both major parties warning against an organised Muslim political outfit modelled on the teal movement. Khawaja blasted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for “fuelling Islamophobia” and referred to him as an “absolute disgrace”.

With Khawaja considering what life might look like after cricket, his increasing visibility on important issues has fuelled speculation about what’s next.

“I love to watch movies, and I want to play a lot of golf. But I’ve always been the guy who needs his brain ticking over. I’m studying to do an MBA now to keep my options open.”

Then he drops the big one.

“Honestly, I know many people in politics too ... I’ve always thought … maybe. I’m good mates with [federal Treasurer] Jim Chalmers. He loves basketball and texts me now and then. I’m not sure if I will, but I’d never rule it out.

“I don’t know what life after cricket will be like. My wife says I’m not a planner, I’m a ‘let’s go with the flow kind of guy’.”

The writer travelled to Sydney as a guest of Amazon Prime.

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