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Left-handed batsman Usman Khawaja has joined compatriot Dan Christian in calling out the continuing racism points that exist in Australian cricket. Khawaja was born in Pakistan however moved to Australia along with his household when he was 5. The 33-year-old cricketer has been a key cog in Australia’s top-order, having performed 93 worldwide matches (44 Tests, 40ODIs and 9 T20Is) since his debut within the longest format of the sport in January 2011.
The left-handed batsman revealed that he feels the notion of him as a “lazy” cricketer has been there due to 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,” cricketc.com.au quoted 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.
Khawaja, who has 10 worldwide centuries underneath his belt, is about to hitch Cricket Australia (CA) working group tasked with creating an motion plan specializing in inclusion and larger cultural range inside Australian cricket.
“The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realised 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,” Khawaja opined.
“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 needs that Australian cricket produces extra function fashions who might be seemed upon by the youngsters from completely different ethnic backgrounds.
“When you come from a subcontinental family — all of Asia, really — studying is very important. My mum wanted me to stop playing cricket and study, and that happens a lot to guys my age coming through the ranks,” he mentioned.
“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 can’t do both, so long as you have the discipline and you’re prepared to make a lot of sacrifices along the way, Khawaja added.
“Kids have to be given help, we have to speak brazenly and allow them to know that, ‘Hey, you are not the one individual going by way of this, we have been by way of this, we have seen this, we have handled it and we have pushed on. You can do the identical factor,” he additional mentioned.
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Last week, Cricket Australia had launched an investigation after it was revealed that Christian was exposed to racist remarks when he spoke about the casual racism he has experienced in Australian cricket.
“There’s additionally the problem of individuals getting disheartened in the event that they get racially vilified once they’re arising by way of the ranks. The quantity of occasions I heard, ‘They gained”t choose you’, ‘You will not slot in’ – if sufficient folks preserve saying that to you, you would possibly begin really believing it,” he additional defined.
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