Usman Khawaja has opened up on why he kept the rheumatoid arthritis that threatened his playing future a secret for his entire Test career.
The former Test star releases his autobiography, Sabr, on 10 November, which he said he wrote “for people who do love cricket and for those who don’t”.
“We are all human and go through the ups and downs of life. I go through the ups and downs of cricket and it gets accentuated because everyone gets to see it,” Khawaja said.
One key aspect of Khawaja’s career the public did not know about was the arthritis diagnosis at the age of 22 after the pain in his left knee was so great he couldn’t walk 10m to the bathroom.
Only regular injections kept him on his feet and able to play cricket. He still has them.
“It was debilitating. I took an injection last night,” Khawaja said in Brisbane on Monday. “It was part of the reason that I did my back at the end of my career, but I couldn’t tell anyone.
“I never got injured before I had my arthritic illness, but after that I got injured quite a lot and had to find a way to get my body in the right spot. Even my best friend from high school, Ardil, didn’t know until one year ago.”
The reason Khawaja didn’t open up about it? “I didn’t want anyone to use it against me,” he said. “I felt like I already had all these stereotypes I was trying to beat in Australian cricket, and I didn’t want to use that as an excuse.”
Keeping the illness secret was a feat in itself. He said he was thankful the people who did know initially at Cricket NSW, Cricket Australia and various medical staff “kept to their ethical code and didn’t say anything”.
Khawaja, who made 6,229 Test runs with 16 centuries, did not engage a ghost writer for his book for one simple reason.
“I didn’t think anyone could encapsulate my story like I could because no one has been through the same journey in Australian cricket like I have,” he said.
“The immigrant, brown, Pakistani Muslim kid coming from overseas to play our national game is something I didn’t feel comfortable someone else writing about.”
Khawaja met with Australia captain Pat Cummins to tell him about the aspect of his book that deals with the infamous Sandpapergate ball-tampering episode in South Africa in 2018.
“I didn’t come out in my book to shock and awe,” Khawaja grinned. “It is my story. People have learned over time that I am pretty open and honest about most things. My goal for my story was to relate to everyone.
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“I love autobiographies, and cricket ones in particular. I found that people talked a lot about the cricket but not a lot about themself a lot of the time.”
Khawaja writes about his subcontinent life and then his life as a cricketer in Australia. He said there were “funny stories” and “great learnings”.
“There are also some tough times with racial vilification, but amalgamated together it is a different story to anything you would have read in a cricket autobiography,” he said.
Khawaja has proven to be a trailblazer in Australian cricket who opened a door for others to follow.
“There hadn’t been another me before me, but now there are plenty of players with a subcontinent background coming in,” he said. “You’ve got Jason Sangha, Tanveer Sangha and Gurinder Sandhu.”
Tanveer Sangha and Sandhu have both played white-ball cricket for Australia.
“They haven’t cracked the Tests, which is the hardest,” Khawaja said. “That is always the goal. When we start seeing the Test team represented by the multicultural community, that is when you know you have started to make headway.”
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