Star opener Usman Khawaja has known as out former Australian coaches and selectors for not believing he may bat in opposition to spin as he celebrated scoring a particular Test century in India.
Khawaja’s 14th Test century was considered one of his best, batting by way of your entire first day in opposition to India on Thursday to place Australia in charge of the Border-Gavaskar trophy finale.
The 36-year-old toured India in 2013 and 2017 however needed to wait till the primary match of this sequence in Nagpur final month to make an Test look within the nation.
Khawaja has made up for misplaced time to be the main run-scorer from both crew throughout the 4 Tests, cashing in on an Ahmedabad pitch with far much less demons in it than the primary three matches.
The left-hander stated his perceived weak spot in opposition to spin-bowling may have been a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.
“Any time I got to play spin, people were like ‘you can’t play spin’ – I probably started believing it myself,” Khawaja stated.
“I didn’t really get the support from the people around me at the time.
“Didn’t feel like the team really supported me, didn’t feel like the coaching staff and selectors really supported me through that journey. It just made it so hard.
“Throughout the middle of my career, I got told I couldn’t play spin and that’s why I never got an opportunity to play in India.
“Whether I was or wasn’t (weak against spin), I’m a better player of spin now, no doubt about that.
“Fortunately enough, I’m quite stubborn so I went out of my own way to learn. I had to go back and figure it out all by myself.”
Khawaja’s gorgeous profession resurgence has been among the finest tales to occur to Australian cricket within the final 18 months.
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After a greater than two-year absence, he was solely recalled to the Test crew in January 2022 as a result of Travis Head was dominated out of the Ashes battle on the SCG after testing constructive to COVID-19.
Khawaja famously scored centuries in each innings of that Test to re-establish himself as considered one of Australia’s greatest batters.
He was named the Shane Warne Test Player of the Year final month after scoring 1080 runs with 4 centuries throughout 2022.
“It’s just nice to go out there and tick off a hundred in India which was something if you told me that five years ago I’d think you were crazy,” Khawaja stated.
“There was a lot of emotion, I just never expected this to happen.
“I do feel like that monkey went off my back when I scored that hundred in Dubai (against Pakistan in 2018) – but that was Dubai.
“I wanted to do it in the subcontinent, so it’s very special.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
