'He'll Probably Never Say it But...': Usman Khawaja Reveals His Pick as Australia's Opener Between Travis Head or Steve Smith

Australia’s left-handed opener Usman Khawaja has backed Travis Head to partner with him at the top for the five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against India, starting from November 22 in Perth.

He added that premier batter Steve Smith should bat at number four in the Test team. After winning the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at home in 2014/15, Australia hasn’t won the prestigious series on its home soil in 2018/19 and 2020/21 respectively.

“At the end of the day, it’s a decision for the selectors. But if you have me opening, Labuschagne three, Smith four … I feel like Travis Head might be best suited (to open the batting).”

“He’s obviously been very successful opening the batting in one-day cricket and, breaking it down, I’d probably lean towards him. But again, it’s not my decision. It is up to the selectors and I think they have been very good with their processes over the last couple of years,” said Khawaja to Fox Cricket.

Head has been a regular opener for Australia in white-ball cricket, with his recent heroics being a quick 59 off just 23 balls against England in the T20I series opener at Southampton. “The confidence transfers over. When you’re seeing the ball well, scoring lots of runs and not much is going through your head, it’s a great place to be. And when you’re in that place, your confidence transfers over … it definitely does,” added Khawaja.

On the other hand, Smith, 35, was promoted to open the batting alongside Khawaja following David Warner’s retirement but has averaged only 28.50 in four Tests against the West Indies and New Zealand.

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“He’ll just probably never say it. So I’ll say it for him. Opening is a very important spot … (but) I still think we have the best Test player of my era on the side, Steve Smith and his best spot has been number four. I feel like that’s his best spot. I feel like the best balance for our team is (Marnus) Labuschagne three, Smith four.”

“For me, the number one consideration is ‘what’s best for the team?’ What order scores us the most runs? And if you look at how many runs we scored with Davey Warner in the team and Smudge batting at four, we scored a lot of runs. With Smudge opening, we’ve still won games, but I don’t think we’ve scored as many runs as we could’ve. And when things are in his favour. he’s almost unstoppable”.

As compared to his lean opening returns, Smith has an impressive average of 61.51 while batting at number four. Citing Sir Donald Bradman as an example to further make his point, Khawaja remarked, “If you know your cricket history, there was a situation in the 1930s where Don Bradman, faced with a green top, batted himself at number seven.”

“Batted himself seven and scored over 200. (Laughs) Imagine if he did that now? But when you’ve got your best batsman, you want to protect him. And in Australia, the hardest time to bat, by far, is that first hour.”

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“New Kookaburra ball, new wicket, it’s always the hardest time – I don’t care who you are. And don’t get me wrong, Steve Smith will score runs as an opening batsman. But will he score more batting number four? I reckon he will,” concluded Khawaja.