“He’s paid for his mistakes,” Usman Khawaja backs Steve Smith to lead Australia once again

Usman Khawaja, the Australian batsman believes that Steve Smith has paid for his mistakes and should be allowed to captain Australia once again. Smith was involved in ‘sandpaper controversy’ on the South African tour in 2018. This led to his one-year ban from cricket and an additional year of suspension from captaincy.

However, Steve Smith is available for captaincy once again after serving out his term and Khawaja sees no reason why Smith should not be renamed as the captain, if he wishes to do so. Tim Paine is under severe pressure after losing the home series against India, 2-1 in the summer. Khawaja opined that Smith is not only Australia’s best batsman but also has experience in leading the side.

“If Steve Smith wants to captain Australia, I think he should captain Australia. 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,” Usman Khawaja said to Fox Cricket.

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There’s still a lot of hard work to be done: Khawaja

After losing the home series against India, former Australian captain, Michael Clarke suggested that Usman Khawaja should be recalled back to the Test squad. The left-hander was delighted with Clarke’s statement and said that it was very pleasing to see the ex-captain of the team, back his abilities.

“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,” Khawaja said.

“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,” he added.