Usman Khawaja Australia cricket team future – will he play another test for Australia? Will Travis Head remain as an opener against England?

“Each Test presents a new challenge. We’ve got the red ball in Adelaide – we haven’t done that too often recently. It’s great that Trav has put his hand up to do that in the past. We haven’t gone down that path a whole lot. We have in this instance, so will we continue to do that? We’ll have to wait and see.”

The news that Wood has been ruled out of the rest of the series, having bowled just 10 overs in Perth before his knee flared up, may also factor in Australia’s choice of openers.

The other way in which Khawaja can return is if, with Head as an opener, room is made in the middle order. Playing Josh Inglis at No.7 indicated that he was not considered a straight swap for Head, and Khawaja would hardly knock back the opportunity to bat somewhere fresh after the new ball has been blunted by others.

“The assumption is that he can only open,” McDonald said of Khawaja. “So I think that he does have the flexibility. We like to think that all our batters have the flexibility to be able to perform anywhere in that order.

“We’re open to what the batting model would look like moving forward, should there be any moving parts. Whether Trav opens, whether he goes back to the middle, that will all play out. We’re taking it Test by Test.”

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Back in 2019, when he was dropped from No.3 out of the side to make room for Marnus Labuschagne to keep his place alongside Steve Smith, Khawaja wondered why it was so often the case that players were left out entirely, rather than tried in different positions.

“There was no discussion of, ‘Maybe we can push Uzzy down to five or six’,” he said in 2023. “It was, ‘We’re just going to drop Uzzy and keep everyone else where they are’. That was their choice, and that’s fine.”

Khawaja made a strong case for his own adaptability three years later. When he made his return to the Test team in January 2022 in Sydney, Khawaja did not do so as an opener, but rather as No.5 in the order in place of Head, who had COVID-19.

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The centuries Khawaja then peeled off in each innings of the match demanded he be retained for the following game when Head returned in Hobart – pushing out Marcus Harris. Khawaja became an opener through the flexibility of thought that McDonald and Cummins have grown increasingly vocal about when it comes to the batting order.

It would be ironic, if not poetic, should Khawaja’s final recall come in the same batting spot where his celebrated comeback began, but McDonald’s words on Tuesday certainly left room for the possibility.

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