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Usman Khawaja held a 17-minute press conference ahead of Queensland training in Brisbane on Friday to explain his side of the story.
Usman Khawaja has expressed disappointment on the Queensland saga (Picture credit: AP)
Star Australia batter Usman Khawaja has said that Queensland knew that he had a hamstring injury and that is why did not turn up for a Sheffield Shield match, and all claims made against him picking and choosing games to play were categorically untrue and he is disappointed by the situation.
Khawaja confirmed that he will play for Queensland in next week’s Sheffield Shield final against South Australia in Adelaide.
Queensland manager Joe Dawes and board member Ian Healy had lashed out at Khawaja and the latter has now hit back with an emotional defence of his injury and his actions.
“There’s a lot of misinformation being thrown around. The most disappointing thing was, that I tried to keep this as in-house as possible behind the scenes. It’s not anymore. Joe Dawes came out the other day and said a few inflammatory things, which was disappointing to me as a player and after that, I just felt like I had to speak up and say something and give my side a story,” Khawaja said while speaking to the media.
“Joey said that the medical staff had no idea. That is 100% wrong. I’ve talked to both our physios. I’ve talked to the Australian physio. I was talking to the Australian physio the whole time,” Khawaja added.
Dawes had said that the star batter didn’t have any hamstring problems that they were aware of.
“It was disappointing because it’s categorically untrue. So I just wanted to clear that up, that the physios 100% knew about my hammy injury,” Khawaja said.
The star Australia batter said that when he returned from Sri Lanka he was managing a hamstring impingement, a torn rotator cuff and a calf niggle that had arisen during his unbeaten 232 in the first Test in Galle.
“We came up with a plan that I would play Tasmania and I would take the next game off. And these are all fluid, but at the moment, I played Tasmania, took the next game off with the light of playing the Shield final,” Khawaja said.