Usman Khawaja: Racism In Australia Cricket Must End

“I always had that ‘lazy’ undertone when I was growing up and I think part of that was my relaxed nature but part of it was also because I was Pakistani, and subcontinent people were seen as lazy, not doing the hard yards and whatnot,”

The left-handed batsman Usman Khawaja has joined the struggle in calling out the ongoing segregation of race in the Australian cricket league.

The ongoing racism in Australian cricket left Usman Khawaja with a choice but to resist and join Dan Christian in calling out the racism issues in the league.

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Usman Khawaja was born in Pakistan but moved to Australia with his family when he was five years.

The 33-year-old batsman has been a key player in Australia’s top order, he played 93 international matches (44 Tests, 400Dis and 9 T20Is) in the longest format of the game since January 2011.

Khawaja revealed that he feels the perception of him as a “lazy” player has been there because of his ethnicity.

“I always had that ‘lazy’ undertone when I was growing up and I think part of that was my relaxed nature but part of it was also because I was Pakistani, and subcontinent people were seen as lazy, not doing the hard yards and whatnot,” cricket.com.au quoted Usman Khawaja as saying.

“Running has never been natural to me, so when we used to do lots of fitness testing I wasn’t as good as everyone else. When you put that against where I was from, that did play against me. I like to think we’re starting to move on from that, but there’s definitely still that undertone… I still hear (similar stereotypes), if someone’s a bit different,” he added.

Usman Khawaja who has ten international centuries under his belt is set to join working group Cricket Australia (CA) with the aim of creating an action plan on inclusion and good cultural diversity within Australian cricket.

“The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that when it comes to diversity – especially in cricket in general – I think we’ve been OK at it but we’re still just not quite there,” Australian batsman Usman Khawaja said.

“If you look at the landscape in terms of multicultural cricketers around, we’ve got a few subcontinental cricketers – myself, Gurinder (Sandhu), Arjun Nair, Jason Sangha, and Tanveer Sangha coming up through the ranks … (but) we’ve still got a long way to go,” he added.

Khawaja hopes that Australian cricket develops more leaders who can be role models to young children from different cultural groups.

“When you come from a subcontinental family of Asia, really – studying is very vital. My mum wanted me to stop playing cricket and study, and that happens a lot to guys my age coming through the ranks,” said Khawaja.

“Generally with the subcontinent community I know how important that is to mums and dads, so we need to emphasise that, especially with technology these days and studying from distance, there’s no reason why you cannot do both, so long as you have the discipline and you’re prepared to make a lot of sacrifices along the way,”  he added.

“Kids need to be given support, we need to talk openly and let them know that, ‘Hey, you’re not the only person going through this, we’ve been through this, we’ve seen this, we’ve dealt with it and we’ve pushed on. You can do the same thing,” he further said.

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Cricket Australia had started with the investigations following the Christian being exposed to racist remarks when he spoke about the casual racism he has experienced in Australian cricket.

“There’s also the issue of people getting disheartened if they get racially vilified when they’re coming up through the ranks. The amount of times I heard, ‘They won’t pick you’, ‘You won’t fit in’ – if enough people keep saying that to you, you might start actually believing it,” he explained.

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Accredited To Comfort Matlho

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