Usman Khawaja believes that Steve Smith has paid the price for his mistakes and there is no reason why he shouldn’t be given the captaincy responsibilities once Tim Paine ends his career. Khawaja has further added that he is hoping to be back amongst the runs, after a lean patch in domestic cricket.
Steve Smith’s captaincy ban ended in March 2020 after which he was eligible to take over the captaincy of the Australian team but the fact that Tim Paine and Aaron Finch led the team with panache ensured that Cricket Australia sticking with the duo for the next assignments. Justin Langer spoke about how Smith had to go through the process before becoming the Australian captain once again and Usman Khawaja feels Smith should take over the responsibility as soon as Paine calls it a day.
“If Steve Smith wants to captain Australia, I think he should captain Australia,” Queensland captain Khawaja told reporters in Brisbane on Friday, reported AFP.
“He’s our number one batsman, he’s done it before, he’s paid for his mistakes, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be in line for the captaincy if wants to do it.”
One of Australia’s most successful batsmen in the last decade, Khawaja endured a difficult phase in the last couple of years and lost his central contract after a succession of poor performances. However, recently he showed signs of coming back to form with a century against Tasmania in the Sheffield Shield before hitting a 93 against the same opposition in the Marsh Cup ODIs.
However, the Queensland cricketer is not looking too much into the stats and believes that a lot of things need to go his way before he can make a comeback. Khawaja, who was praised heavily by Michael Clarke recently, further added that he is now just looking forward to scoring loads of runs for his Queensland side.
“It’s always nice to get support from an ex-Test captain. He’s a gun player himself, but I don’t read too much into it. I feel good. All season actually I’ve felt really good. Sometimes that always doesn’t translate to runs.
“You can’t get too relaxed on yourself and think that things are going to work out. There’s still a lot of hard work to be done. When things are going well, you just try to keep doing the same thing for as long as you can, because there are plenty of time when things don’t go well, no matter who you are. Hopefully, I can keep getting runs for Queensland and we can win more games,” Khawaja added.
