Australia’s Usman Khawaja and India’s Mohinder Amarnath have gone down in history as batsmen who scored a hundred on their return to Test cricket after a considerable amount of time
Usman Khawaja and Mohinder Amarnat
At the Sydney Cricket Ground last week, Australia’s middle-order batsman Usman Khawaja provided true indication of what it means to be Two Good.
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He hit up two centuries in his comeback Test - his first in more than two years; not appearing on an Australia Test team sheet for 14 Tests. To come back the way he did after a considerable gap is unprecedented in terms of sheer volume of runs. It’s also one of the many reasons why he is so special.
Khawaja’s return to Test cricket reminded me of how Mohinder Amarnath came back after he was ignored for 23 Tests across November 1979 and September 1982. He was recalled for the 1982-83 tour of Pakistan and scored a hundred in the opening Test at Lahore.
Amarnath had made Test comebacks before (in 1976) and (1979), but this was sterling - against an Imran Khan-led attack which he took 584 runs off in six Tests inclusive of three hundreds.
Skipper Imran said the Lahore hundred was a “great reward” to Amarnath, who held the innings together while R Mohan wrote in The Sportstar: “Mohinder had a testing time when the Pakistanis fired bouncers at him. Even after three years’ absence from Tests, he could still take the stuff on his body or hook when he had time enough to prove how wrong everyone had been in assessing the one chink in his armour to be so overwhelming as to make him unfit for Test cricket.”
Amarnath, who should hold the copyright for the word ‘comeback’ in a cricketing sense, followed Khawaja’s fortunes at Sydney. He told me on Tuesday how delighted he was for the classy left-hander. “What he did is not easy, what with people doubting your abilities all the time. He proved a lot of people wrong. He must have felt reborn in a way. I’m sure he will go from strength to strength now.
“I felt something similar [after the comeback hundred in Lahore] after being under the scanner all the time and everything under the sun been spoken about. It’s the best slap in the face for the doubters.”
If Amarnath’s fans thought the 1982-83 tour of Pakistan was the last of his comebacks, they were mistaken. After his 0,0,1,0,0,0 sequence in three Tests against the West Indies at home in 1983-84, the selectors were forced to drop him. Picked again for the 1984-85 tour of Pakistan, Amarnath scored a second innings hundred in the opening Test at Lahore.
Among Indian batsmen, other comeback-with-a-ton instances include ML Jaisimha in Brisbane (flown in as replacement for BS Chandrasekhar on the 1967-68 tour of Australia), Dilip Sardesai in Jamaica (dropped for the home series against Australia after the opening Test and picked for the 1970-71 tour of the West Indies), Navjot Singh Sidhu in Bangalore (picked for the 1988-89 series against New Zealand after two Tests against the West Indies in 1983-84) and Ravi Shastri at Lord’s (recalled for the 1990 tour of England after being dropped for the New Zealand tour).
Shastri felt he was jaded on the tour of Pakistan in 1989 and not going to New Zealand provided him a two-and-a-half-month break. “When I came back, I found the motivation back again and I found that I was a lot more hungrier,” he told Sportsworld magazine. The Lord’s hundred in the first Test was followed up with another in the third and final Test at the Oval.
Back to Khawaja. The Pakistani-born player was not coy to talk about the possibility of him scoring a hundred in the build-up to the Sydney Test when it was announced that he would replace Covid-hit Travis Head. “It’s one of those things where even if I do play, it’ll only be for one game, I understand that situation, hopefully I can go out there and score a hundred and do well for the team in the absence of Heady [Head]!” he told cricket.com.au. It’s one thing to talk about getting a hundred, quite another to go out and get it and score another in the second innings.
As things stand, the twin hundreds in Sydney cannot guarantee him a place in the playing XI for the final Ashes Test at Hobart. Head is fit to come in and if any batsman has to be dropped it will have to be Marcus Harris, whose approach the selectors are happy with. Dropping Harris would mean Khawaja will have to open the innings. He has done so only seven times in 79 Test innings, but his record at the top of the order is impressive - 484 runs at 96.80 with two centuries. That said, opening will be another kettle of fish. He last walked out to open the batting for Australia in a Test three Januarys ago.
Khawaja, in any case, will embrace any challenge. For, he has proved to be more than just Two Good.
mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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