Usman Khawaja hits back at Shane Warne for questioning his desire to play for Australia

Australia started off their World Test Championship series against Pakistan with an innings and 5-run win at the Gabba in Brisbane. Despite a valiant effort from Pakistani batsmen in the second innings, the first innings deficit of 340 runs proved too much for the visitors to overhaul and with Australian bowlers gaining an upper hand, they lost the match.

For the home side, David Warner (154), Marnus Labuschagne (185), Joe Burns (97) and Matthew Wade (60) pummeled the inexperienced Pakistani bowling attack on a fast pitch at the Gabba. Meanwhile, former Australia spinner Shane Warne had lauded the Australian batsmen and management for the convincing victory by the team. Usman Khawaja, the out of favour batsman was quite offended by one of his statements.

Warne had questioned Usman Khawaja’s desire to play for the country

Shane Warne had lauded the selectors Trevor Hohns and Justin Langer for dropping Usman Khawaja not only from the playing XI but from the squad altogether after a poor outing against India and then England in the Ashes 2019. This led to him losing his place in the Kangaroos’ side and has been gearing up to lead Queensland against Western Australia in the domestic limited-overs tournament final on Tuesday.

Warne had questioned Khawaja’s desire to play for the country in a News Corp column, in which he wrote, “Throughout his Test career, he always seems to do just enough. Sometimes you just want to shake him and get him to show a bit more. Different personalities make up the team and some people aren’t as exuberant and emotional as others, but he can be better, particularly with his body language.”

On the other hand, Khawaja has been in stunning form in the 50-over format and has delivered scores of 138, 112, 5, 31 and 86*, which has taken Queensland into the finals, which will be played at the Allan Border Field.

Taking offence to the same, Khawaja said no one should be questioning his desire to play for Australia. “I don’t think there’s any need to answer that question (how important playing for Australia is). I’m a batsman, I’m a run-scorer first and foremost so that’s my currency, but if you look at my Shield record, you look at my one-day domestic record, my record for Australia, my BBL record, I score runs. That’s all that matters. Not really [going to change my body language], I’m a pretty cool bloke. You either get it or you don’t, that’s the way it is,” he was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo.

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