Khawaja is ready to step back into the international limelight
Queensland coach Darren Lehmann believes batsman Usman Khawaja has become a changed man ever since joining the state side from New South Wales and added that he would be an excellent addition to the Australian side, who are currently looking for veteran Michel Hussey’s replacement.
While Khawaja has not represented Australia in a Test match since December 2011 against New Zealand, captain Michael Clarke has already taken notice of the batsman’s performances for Queensland and is almost certain to include him in the national team for their tour of India later this month.
Khawaja was dropped after playing just six Tests and was told to work on and develop several aspects of his game, including his fielding and rotating the strike regularly while batting.
After moving from New South Wales to Queensland, Khawaja was transformed into more of an attacking batsman by coach Lehmann and is now ready to make his international return.
“I’ve been really impressed, he has adapted to a new aggressive style of play that we’re really big on in Queensland,” Lehmann told ESPNcricinfo. “He’s adjusted to that really well. We’re really impressed with what he’s doing and how he’s gone about it.
“Technically there weren’t too many changes, it was more a mindset with him and getting him to be really aggressive and positive in what he’s doing. He’s taken that on board. He has improved his fielding, he has improved his work ethic off the ground and we’re really pleased for him.”
While Khawaja has not completely got his hands wrapped around Hussey’s spot in the Test side, his 11 innings to date have shown some signs of promise, as he has scored 263 runs, which includes one half-century, at an average of 29.22.
Lehmann is hoping that Australia give Khawaja a decent amount of time to prove his worth and believes that as he works his way back into the groove of international cricket, his confidence levels will go nowhere but up.
“If he gets a good run at it, that’s what you want,” Lehmann said. “If he can get that run and he doesn’t have that fear of getting dropped straight away, he’ll do well. We’re pretty confident with where he’s at and where he’s going. He’s a good kid and he’s worked really hard to get where he wants to get to.”
However, one aspect Khawaja has still failed to overcome is converting his half-centuries into hundreds.
During his time with English county Derbyshire in 2012, Khawaja went on to pass the half-century mark on seven separate occasions, but only once did he manage to convert in into a century.
In this year’s season of the Sheffield Shield, Khawaja has posted three half-centuries and one hundred in 11 innings.
“He does have to get big hundreds,” Lehmann said. “He’s got four or five fifties for us in Shield cricket and only gone on once to get one hundred. We have spoken about conversion rate and that is a big thing, but he’s playing that expansive game now so he has to find the happy medium. He will do that.”
Khawaja’s lone century this season was a thing of beauty, as he smashed 138 runs from 178 deliveries on a green seaming and swinging Bellerive Oval surface, which proved too much for any of the other Queensland batsmen, all of whom failed to even get close to the half-century mark.
“It was outstanding,” Lehmann said. “It was one of the best hundreds I’ve seen in Shield cricket. I don’t think anyone else made fifty runs. It was really impressive.”
Khawaja’s century shows that he has all the potential in the world, but in the end it comes down to concentration and sensible strokeplay, which have been identified as the two main reasons the Pakistani-born batsman has such a dismal conversion rate in international cricket.