Sydney
\nAustralian Test opener Usman Khawaja lashed out Friday at \u201cinflammatory\u201d and \u201ccategorically untrue\u201d comments from Queensland\u2019s head of cricket after he missed a crucial Sheffield Shield game.
\nThe 38-year-old did not feature in Queensland\u2019s clash last week with South Australia in Adelaide which saw them reach the final of the domestic red-ball competition.
\nHe instead flew to Melbourne to watch the Australian Grand Prix.
\nQueensland\u2019s head of cricket Joe Dawes subsequently took aim at the veteran batsman.
\n\u201cOur medical staff said all the way through he has been available for selection,\u201d Dawes was widely cited as saying earlier this week.
\n\u201cThat is my understanding from Cricket Australia staff as well. No hamstring issues as far as we are concerned.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just disappointing he didn\u2019t play a game for Queensland when he had an opportunity to,\u201d Dawes added. \u201cI have got a bunch of blokes here that all want to play.\u201d
\nKhawaja called a press conference on Friday to fire back, saying he was managing an ongoing hamstring issue under a plan formulated with Cricket Australia medical staff and chief selector George Bailey.
\nKhawaja is contracted to Cricket Australia.
\n\u201cJoe Dawes came out the other day and said a few inflammatory things, which was really disappointing to me as a player,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cJoe said the medical staff had no idea (about hamstring injury). That is 100% wrong.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve talked to both our physios\u2026 I was talking to the Australian physio the whole time. Everyone knew about it.
\n\u201cThat was probably one of the most shocking things I\u2019ve heard said, which was really disappointing, because it\u2019s categorically untrue.\u201d
\nHe added that he had Cricket Australia\u2019s blessing to attend the grand prix.
\n\u201cI go home and curl up in a ball or I go and watch F1,\u201d Khawaja said.
\n\u201cI still look after my body. It\u2019s not by any coincidence I\u2019m 38 and still playing.\u201d
\nQueensland meet South Australia again in the Shield final next week, with Khawaja hoping to be fit for selection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sydney Australian Test opener Usman Khawaja lashed out Friday at \u201cinflammatory\u201d and \u201ccategorically untrue\u201d comments from Queensland\u2019s head of cricket after he missed a crucial Sheffield Shield game. The 38-year-old did not feature in Queensland\u2019s clash last week with South Australia in Adelaide which saw them reach the final of the domestic red-ball competition. He …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78720,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78710\/revisions\/78720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}