Opener Usman Khawaja has bounced back from his struggles and hit his 16th test century on day 01 of the first test of Australia’s tour of Sri Lanka 2025.
He brought his century after a 19-month drought for a triple-figure score. The opener scored his last hundred during the first test of the Ashes 2023 at Edgbaston.
He becomes the sixth Australian opener to score a century in Sri Lanka. Khawaja started his innings steadily scoring just three runs off the first 15 balls and got his innings going with a boundary against Asitha Fernando in the fifth over of the innings.
Meanwhile, Travis Head also got into the groove and went after Nishan Peiris smashing him for a boundary and a maximum.
Usman Khawaja brings up his 16th Test Ton 🙌#WTC25 | #SLvAUS 📝: https://t.co/8NKpfnMHjy pic.twitter.com/Kf3EISVIzz
— ICC (@ICC) January 29, 2025
Australia lost Head’s wicket for 92 runs, but Khawaja continued to score and brought and up his half century off 71 deliveries with a single against Prabath Jayasuriya.
The opener even got a score of 54, being dropped by the Sri Lanka captain Dhanajaya de Silva at Slip.
Khawaja looked determined to set a huge score as he joined Steve Smith and the duo began to frustrate Sri lanka at Galle.
Smith who came to bat, started aggressive while Khawaja played as second fiddle and continued to rotate strike and found occasional boundaries.
Australia chose to bat where the side brought Travis Head in the top order to open for the two match test series.
While speaking at the toss, Smith said, “We’ll have a bat. Unsure at this stage, looks a little tacky this morning, not too sure how it’ll play, we’ll wait and see. Josh Inglis gets his opportunity, he’s been banging the door down in Shield cricket.”
“We’ve got three spinners, Starc as the pacer and Head will open. We have to adapt accordingly and see what’s in front of us. Sri Lanka are a very good team. (On 10,000 runs) Hopefully I can tick that off.”
