Usman Khawaja\u2019s back injury has ruled the veteran opener out of the second Ashes Test and thrown his future in the Australian team further into doubt.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old\u2019s place in the XI had been under intense scrutiny since back spasms forced him from the field in the victorious first Test and prevented him from opening the batting.<\/p>\n
Australia had been set for a selection dilemma given Travis Head\u2019s heroic century<\/a> when replacing the out-of-form Khawaja at the top in Perth.<\/p>\n Khawaja completed light training duties during the team\u2019s optional session at the Gabba on Monday, stretching his back, undertaking shuttle runs and batting in the nets. But on Tuesday afternoon, Cricket<\/a> Australia confirmed he had pulled up sore from his injury and would miss the day-night Test in Brisbane from Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s put in a lot of work since the last game to try and get his body right but he hasn\u2019t come up, unfortunately,\u201d said Australian bowler Scott Boland.<\/p>\n Khawaja is remaining with the team to begin his rehabilitation and will race the clock to be fit for the third Test in Adelaide from 17 December.<\/p>\n Even if he is able to recover, Khawaja is no guarantee to hold onto his spot for the remainder of the Ashes<\/a> given a lean run of form that has yielded just one century since June 2023.<\/p>\n Khawaja nicked off after scoring just two in the middle order in his only dig at Optus Stadium, and will turn 39 during the Adelaide Test.<\/p>\n CA chief executive Todd Greenberg said late last month there was no correlation between Khawaja\u2019s back problem and his three days spent on the golf course leading up to the series opener.<\/p>\n Khawaja\u2019s injury means Head is again set to partner recent debutant Jake Weatherald at the top of the order, with Australia opting not to replace Khawaja in the squad.<\/p>\n That will create a vacancy in the middle order and towering allrounder Beau Webster appears the leading candidate to fill it.<\/p>\n Webster has had an impressive first year as a Test cricketer, averaging 34.63 with the bat and taking eight wickets across his first seven Tests. He was the odd man out at the selection table for the first Test, with Cameron Green the only allrounder chosen in the XI that won by eight wickets.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Including Webster could mean pushing Green up to No 5 in the batting order, a spot he has filled just once in 33 Test matches.<\/p>\n \u201c[Webster] was making really good runs at six, he\u2019s bowled really important overs, you\u2019ve seen him in the field, he\u2019s a gun catcher,\u201d Boland said. \u201cAny time he\u2019s in the team, it makes us a stronger team.\u201d<\/p>\n Josh Inglis is the other candidate should Australia prefer a like-for-like option to Head, typically a middle-order aggressor in home conditions. Inglis memorably smacked a century on Test debut in Sri Lanka earlier this year but has averaged a meagre 5.66 across his two Tests since.<\/p>\n Boland conceded the balance of the team has been disrupted \u201ca little bit\u201d by having to contend without Khawaja for at least the second Test. But the gun paceman was confident in Australia\u2019s depth, having played all of his 15 Tests as a replacement for the so-called \u201cbig three\u201d quicks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe probably planned to have Ussie there the whole time,\u201d Boland said. \u201cBut I think the best thing about our team over the last few years is that when someone has come out due to form or an injury or something like that, someone\u2019s always stood up and done their job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usman Khawaja\u2019s back injury has ruled the veteran opener out of the second Ashes Test and thrown his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-294568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}