THE GREAT... No.10
ASHES SELECTIONS
In the 10th part of our series, we take our lead from England’s selectors to celebrate some of the more audacious selections from Ashes past
WORDS: Cameron Ponsonby
Usman Khawaja
SCG, Sydney January 6, 2022
PHOTO BY CAMERON SPENCER
A gifted strokemaker, Khawaja’s career looked destined to end with an asterisk next to it. In and out of the team for a decade, he averaged 40.66 from 44 Tests but was rarely assured of his place in the side. At the start of 2022, his latest absence had also been his longest at two-and-a-half years. Add in the fact he’d recently turned 35 and everyone, including Khawaja himself, had accepted that that would likely be his lot.
But the strange times of Covid cricket had other ideas. When Travis Head was pinged in the lead-up to the Sydney Ashes Test, Khawaja was called in as an emergency replacement and proceeded to score a ton in each innings on his home ground. The following Test, Head returned and Marcus Harris was dropped to make way for Khawaja at the top of the order, a position he has since made his own with centuries in Pakistan, India and England in the 18 months since. After the Lord’s Test, Khawaja held the highest average of any opener in history to have played more than 20 innings. Not bad for a fill-in.
Cyril Washbrook
May 11, 1948
LOCATION & PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
At 41, Washbrook’s race was run. Five years on from his last Test appearance in 1951, his playing days may not have been completely finished, but they were definitely winding down. Appointed as Lancashire’s first ever professional captain in 1954, he was then named as an England selector in 1956. His first series in the role was the Ashes that summer, and after England lost the second match of the series to go 1-0 down, the legend goes that at the following selection meeting he was asked by his peers to leave the room, and when he returned, they asked him to play.