Sport

How Usman Khawaja is changing the face of Australian cricket

He won't play in the Brisbane Test, but Usman Khawaja is back in the Australian squad for the first time in two years and he's as competitive as he was growing up in Sydney in the 1990s.

"I enjoyed playing all sport," Khawaja told ABC Sport. "And I'm not sounding cocky, but I was pretty good at most sports. I think they just go hand in hand, when you've got good hand-eye coordination you can kind of just end up doing anything.

"I had two older brothers, 10 years and seven years older than me. They wouldn't let me play with them so all I wanted to do was play with them and compete.

"Honestly, in the backyard, at a family party, seeing kids play in the park, at school handball, anything it was, I just loved competing."

A fortnight before his 35th birthday, the Queensland captain ranks cricket as just one of his devotions. He's also a young father and is in charge of a charity foundation that gives free cricket clinics to disadvantaged children.

Now he's ready to talk about race and how Cricket Australia needs to change to embrace all people.

"I think [conversation around race is] really important," he said. "Because we're such a diverse country, so many different, beautiful backgrounds, different cultures, and cricket for a long time has been straight down the line — this way.

"I think that's one thing I'd love to see slowly change. [What] really hurts me the most is when I hear someone from the subcontinent or either second or third generation — who do you support? And they're like, 'Oh yeah we support India or Pakistan. We don't support Australia'.

"That hurts me because I love Australia. I love the Australian cricket team and I really want them to feel the same way. I don't want them to feel like they can't get involved in that either. When we start seeing that, I think you know you've made some good inroads."

Khawaja the trailblazer

Khawaja was born in Islamabad, Pakistan in 1986, and his family moved to Sydney when he was four.

"[When] my parents moved to Australia, it was very different for them," he said. "For me, not really too different. We lived at Centennial Park in a little crappy apartment, I think it was a two-bedroom apartment for the five of us, so we were all crammed in, but I don't know any different. I still have very fond memories of that time."

In his earliest days, he communicated with other kids at Paddington Public School through games.

"I didn't understand or speak English when I came to Australia, but I do remember that I was playing footy and cricket from day one at school. And I could not speak a word of English but I could still do that.

In club cricket, Khawaja was surrounded by teammates and opponents from families new to Australia.

"Even when I was young there was a strong multicultural presence in cricket, especially from subcontinent backgrounds," he said. "I mean, it's a lot stronger now but Australia has grown in the last 15, 20, 25 years in terms of multiculturalism.

"There's a much stronger presence now but there were kids of subcontinent background. I think that was very normal, something that Australia had for a long time."

The Khawaja family moved from the city to Parramatta as young Usman began excelling in sport.

Multiculturalism was all around him, except when he began qualifying for representative cricket teams.

"It wasn't until you started getting higher, higher, higher, higher, higher where you could probably stop seeing that," he said. "You could just see it dwindling, dwindling, dwindling.

"I realised there were less and less people who looked like me and how predominantly white the game was. So that was probably the first insight I got — hold the phone, there's something different going on here, I think I'm a little bit different here."

Those adolescent observations were made as Khawaja was belatedly falling in love with the Australian men's teams.

"I struggled as a young kid to support Australia because I just didn't see any connection between myself and the Australian cricket team," he said. "I felt like they were totally different, white-dominated, the VB drinking larrikins that I really struggled with in Western Sydney for a long time.

Big-hitting wicketkeeper-batter Adam Gilchrist and fast bowler Brett Lee won Khawaja over.

"Adam Gilchrist was probably the main reason I started because I loved him," Khawaja said. "I loved the person he was. I loved [that] I could look at him — I'm like, 'Ah this is the type of cricketer I want to be'.

"And then when you see someone like Brett Lee charging in, bowling 150-kilometre thunderbolts and having as much humility and always having a smile on his face, I was like, 'Yeah, these are the guys'.

"It wasn't until that generation started to come in that I started to actually support Australia. So I kind of understood where these people were coming from that were saying this to me — that they really couldn't connect to the Australian cricket team because they didn't really see themselves in the Australian cricket team."

Confronting racism

Khawaja faced more teenage challenges than other talented players.

"It was hard to break down that cultural barrier," he said.

"I didn't go out drinking. You know, I went and prayed on Fridays. I did Ramadan. There were a lot of these things in the late 90s, the early 2000s, people had no idea about.

"I was very different and that is held against you to some respect, and I saw it from time to time. I think part of it had to do with culture, part of it definitely had to do with some sort of systemic racism, and even part of it had to do some sort of bias.

"Because cricket, like any other game, it's a game selected by people. And you've got some lovely people around cricket. Ninety-eight per cent of people that I dealt with in cricket were great people. But whether you understand, or whether you like to admit it or not, there's always a certain connection you have with someone who looks a bit more like you, who's got similar cultural beliefs as you."

The left-hander wasn't put off by people telling him he could never play for Australia because his skin was the wrong colour.

"The amount of times I heard that from everywhere," he said. "It wasn't a confronting thing for them to say because I think they 100 per cent believed it and I don't think they were totally wrong in a lot of respects.

"I was very thick-skinned. Whenever anyone told me that I was like, 'Nup, I'll show you, I'll prove you wrong'. That's just the way I was because I was so competitive. So whenever I heard that it just drove me more.

"I guess it does take a very strong personality to make it in sport in general. But I think that was just my personality to get through it, I just never let that stuff get me down because I was so focused on wanting to play cricket and doing the best I can."

Making history

On making his debut for New South Wales in 2008, Khawaja was asked to speak publicly about his faith.

"You don't see yourself as the Muslim boy," he told reporters at a media conference. "You see yourself as part of another team. I've grown up in the culture, I am this culture. That's about it."

Three years later he became the first Muslim to wear a baggy green cap in a Test match for Australia.

In representing his country, he faced criticism from ignorant pundits.

"I was brought up in a very subcontinent sort of culture where respect was huge," he said.

"You didn't talk back to adults. You stayed quiet — you went about your business. And a lot of the time that got misconstrued as 'Ussy didn't want it enough', you know, 'He's not competitive enough'.

"And, of everything I've told you already, all I did my whole life as a kid was competition — it's all I wanted to do. But just because I wasn't outwardly emotional and didn't want to be outwardly emotional, then suddenly those things would be held against me."

More hurtful were comments about him being "lazy".

"I know a lot of that was just stereotype," he said. "People assumed that subcontinent people were lazy or, you know, the amount of times I used to hear West Indian cricketers – 'Oh, yeah they're lazy'. And I'm like, 'You can't generalise the whole culture. You just can't do that'."

The future is multicultural

The Usman Khawaja Foundation is working with Cricket Australia to make the game more inclusive.

"Usman is a real leader in our sport," Cricket Australia chief Nick Hockley said. "He's very passionate about giving back. It's taking the opportunity to build relationships at every level of the game and it's about people seeing themselves, that they have a pathway, and I think that's why the work that Usman is doing is so important."

The foundation's work was hampered during COVID lockdowns.

"But we're back, we're up and running," Khawaja said. "Trying to get clinics across Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne — if we can. And they're free clinics for anyone who wants to come and participate in the game.

"Clinics are being held in areas of greatest need.

"It's more about giving people a go from low socio-economic backgrounds, refugees, immigrants, anyone who wants to get involved in the game. There's no fee. From my point of view, it's about giving kids a helping hand — those who need it."

To improve connection with national teams, Khawaja said he wanted to see prominent coaches with a diversity of backgrounds and experiences.

"As a player myself, the things I went through as a kid, they were so different to the average white Australian. I went through my relationship with my parents and things like girlfriends and whatever and all these that are involved, and you don't even think twice about.

"The funny thing is all the subcontinent boys I talk to, most of them go through the same issues. So we can relate, hence we get together. We can laugh about these things and joke around but when a kid is going through those issues and he's playing cricket — 50 per cent of his time is spent on the cricket field or training or whatever — you can't really communicate that to the coach or anyone else because they don't really get it, right?

"And when they might be feeling down or the way they play their game might be very different to how someone from a totally Anglo-Saxon white background has been brought up."

These changes are being made at community level: players of South Asian heritage are enriching the game in clubs all around the country in unprecedented numbers.

Popular Truganina Cricket Club is a good example.

It was established five years ago in a new housing estate west of Melbourne, one of the fastest-growing suburbs in Australia.

"The families are from all different backgrounds, especially coming from continent, South Asian background," club president Jamal Mohammed said. "India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And I've got a lot of inquiries from other nationalities as well but they are too young to join so I tell them to come back when they are turning eight or nine next year."

The club's dream is to have a player represent an Australian team in the next decade.

"We are looking forward to it," Mr Mohammed said. "Especially boys and girls. They are working very hard on their game.

"We've got the Australian colours. We follow Australia with our heart. I will tell everybody all the time. Your score will tell about you. Don't worry about this and that. You perform, you will be selected. Australia is a sporting country."

Premier-grade teenagers Yash Pednekar and Ashley Chandrasinghe are best mates from the strong Dandenong and District region, south-east Melbourne.

Pednekar is making his name at Richmond, while Chandrasinghe plays for Casey-South Melbourne.

When they have time, they catch up for practice inside modest nets at outer suburban Narre Warren, where the sound of bat on ball is constant, almost rhythmical.

"I've seen in the last couple of years participation rates and even the quality of players from multicultural backgrounds has been immense," Pednekar told ABC Sport. "And you see it now in the Big Bash and higher up — there are a lot of multicultural players coming through.

"I feel like the opportunities I've got as a player have been really good."

Chandrasinghe last week made his debut for Victoria's Second XII, scoring twin half-centuries at the MCG.

"Still got a lot of development left," he said. "At the moment, just see how far I can take me and hopefully it will lead to some Victorian colours or Australian colours."

Khawaja wants Cricket Australia to bring in more support.

"You're talking high performance, you're talking all the way up through the state system, more coaches in terms of BBL and then the Australian team," he said.

"And the exact same thing happens with CA staff members — how diverse are we with the people actually working at Cricket Australia?

"Cricket Australia did very well with gender inequality over the last few years, trying to get more females involved, getting the female game to grow and getting females on the board — that's been very important. I think that does make a difference because then you have a voice. And then I think the last step is the board — having a voice.

"It doesn't necessarily need to be subcontinent, but a voice for the multicultural community on the board of cricket. I think for a long time the board has revolved [around] — not intentionally, it's just how it is — the same sort of people coming in and out, friends of friends and old cricketers.

"The fact is a lot of the old Australian cricketers have been white — well, they've all been white, so you're not going to get that colour influence, you're not going to get the different backgrounds, the multicultural influence right at the top. And then that funnels down to the bottom, right?"

Mr Hockley said Cricket Australia was focused on changing the face of the sport in the coming years.

"Certainly, I spend much of my time continuing and building those relationships we've built, whether it's the Sri Lankan community here in Melbourne, the Nepali in Sydney. That's something that's shared across the administration.

"Until we're truly representative of the community we serve, we've got work to do."

Mr Hockley said working with Khawaja and others towards inclusivity was Cricket Australia's priority.

"What I can say is women and girls has been the focus for the last five years, and now making sure that cricket is truly inclusive and representative of the community we serve is absolutely the next focus."