Throughout his 15-year international career, Usman Khawaja has always opted for speech over silence.
In announcing his retirement from international cricket ahead of the final Ashes Test in Sydney, the 39 year old also articulated the cost of being the first Muslim and Pakistan-born Australian to ever play for Australia.
A badge of honour that he not only wore, but embodied, because he understood first-hand the cost of being different – a price he was always willing to pay.
“I’m a proud Muslim coloured boy from Pakistan who was told he would never play for the Australian cricket team,” Khawaja said. “Look at me now. And you can do the same.”
As an Islamabad-born immigrant myself, Khawaja’s story resonates deeply with me. It’s about hope and fortitude, but there is an important lesson about becoming without surrendering. He became the figure he – and we – couldn’t see.
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The pertinence of his retirement is heightened by his consistent advocacy for change in an ever-dividing socio-political landscape. If you go through Khawaja’s Instagram feed over the past few years, it will show the batsman raising awareness about the Israel-Gaza war, the attack at Bondi and the Pakistan floods in 2022.
This humanised him. But in a sporting culture that prefers its heroes apolitical, it undoubtedly cost him too.
In 2023, he had “Freedom is a human right” and “All lives are equal” written in the colours of the Palestinian flag on his boots ahead of the Test series against Pakistan but the International Cricket Council prevented him from wearing them. Khawaja refused to assimilate in order to be more palatable – and was charged by the ICC.
In his retirement speech he said: “I hope I have inspired many children along the way, particularly those who feel they are different, those who feel they don’t belong or those who others tell will never make it.”
Khawaja retires with 6,206 runs across 87 Tests, hitting 16 hundreds, including the unbeaten 126 during the 2023 series – the left-hander’s first Ashes ton in England.
There have been other cricketers to bow out with similar statistics, but Khawaja’s legacy will run deeper because he was also saddled with the immeasurable weight of representation.
Khawaja said the criticism he received for playing golf in the lead-up to the Perth Test, where he suffered back spasms, had racial undertones. It was an all-too-familiar example of how he is not afforded the same grace routinely extended to others and yet even in retirement he is advocating for change. The microaggressions he described also echoed similar issues that English cricket has had to reckon with over the past decade.
When Khawaja bows out in Sydney this week, we lose a player who has reformed the sport for the better. We cannot lose the lessons he has taught us too.
Photographs by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images & Paul Kane/Getty Images