Should I stay or should I go? It’s better to burn out than to fade away? Then again, once it’s gone, it’s gone.
The inexorable issue of retirement lurks for every professional sportsperson. More naggingly, the question of when exactly is the right time to step away from the pinnacle of their game – the very same one that has in most cases been played since early childhood – is a notoriously tricky one to wrangle.
Gone are the days of Wilfred Rhodes and WG Grace racking up a half ton of years at Test cricket’s coalface, the golden – or should that be blue rinse – era of thickly flannelled and heavily-moustachioed players creaking their arm over and using their bat as a walking frame into their late 40s and 50s has long since disappeared.
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Like dentures in a glass, the question often begins to rattle around a Test cricketer’s mind once they get the wrong side of 30, especially so if they are going through a poor run of form and/or there is a young whippersnapper yapping at their orthopaedic heels.
Which leads us, albeit as quickly as a pensioner up a cobbled hill, to Usman Khawaja. The R-word certainly seemed to be on the 38-year-old’s mind after a bruising Border-Gavaskar series and ahead of last week’s first Test against Sri Lanka in Galle. It seemed like the journeyman opening batter, who sits on the cusp of 80 Test matches in over a decade, was hinting his time could be nearing. He also suggested that he’d made his peace with the fact.
“I know there might be a right time to slip out,” he said. “If I’m still playing and the selectors are like, ‘we feel like the time has come’, it’s [a case of] ‘you let me know and I can slide out’.”
The context here is that it was a chastening summer for Khawaja. Yes, he showed his own brand of nuggety nous at times but eventually returned an average of just 20.44 runs across the five Tests and was pocketed six times for just 5.50 by a rampant Jasprit Bumrah.
Now, there’s no real shame in that, obviously. Bumrah put in a player-of-the series performance despite ending up on the losing side, scorching 32 Australian wickets at an impressively measly average of 13.06. Never one to shy away from a thorny issue, Khawaja reflected after Australia’s 3-1 series victory that he was, “just getting Bumrah-ed”, that it was “friggin’ tough work” and that this Bumrah was a different fast bowling beast to the one that had failed to get a hold of his scalp in the seven Test innings when they had met previous to the start of the 2024-25 series.
The comments were pure Khawaja. He’s has always spoken his mind and never shied away from honest or awkward conversations. As I type this he’s spoken out about another issue that is close to his heart in customary unflinching manner.
Across the dozen or so years of his Test tenure he’s been in and out of the side a handful of times. He’s suffered significant losses of form, such as his early output against spin on the subcontinent - and ridden some ridiculous crests – see his comeback twin Ashes centuries at the SCG in January 2022. That was followed by a spin-demon vanquishing and emotional trip to Pakistan - the country of his birth.
Khawaja then embraced the role of top order tortoise to England’s hare-um scarum, as he topped the run charts for both sides and proved a significant thorn in Bazball’s paw during the 2023 Ashes.
He’s had his fare share of grapples with team management, from the ‘homeworkgate’ saga on the 2013 tour of India to publicised issues with fitness. The player and man he is now is much more self-assured and self-knowing as a result of his journey through Test cricket, heightened still as the first Muslim to play for Australia.
Khawaja seems like a man at peace with who he is, what he stands for and what the game means for him. He loves it, sure, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. His Wisden 2024 player of the year profile makes mention of his ‘flair for study’, his time at University, his love of music and basketball, oh and he’s a qualified pilot. His wife, Rachel, and two young children have given him further grounding and an ability to see the game for what it is.
“I’m not just playing cricket because I’ve got a gluttony to score lots of runs century number 16, 17, 18 is not going to make a difference to my life. I’m going to finish this game and I’ve got a beautiful family.”
He said all that before making the remarkable double century in Galle last week. The first of his Test career. The innings re-solidified his place in the Australian Test side with just one more Test against Sri Lanka and the small matter of the WTC final at Lord’s against South Africa before the first Ashes Test at Perth in November.
Maybe it’ll be a perfect finish at the SCG after all? Maybe not. Either way Usman Khawaja will take it all in his stride as he always has. One of the modern game’s most singular characters isn’t quite done yet, for that we should be glad.
