One of the three Aussie wickets to go down yesterday was that of Usman Khawaja,the twin centurion in Sydney who was promoted up the order to replace Marcus Harris on the strength of that performance in his comeback Test. Khawaja made 6 and 11 in this match and told Fox about the move: "To be honest the pink ball has made it pretty tough. It's alright, the wicket is doing a little bit, the last couple of days it has. The pink ball is just so inconsistent. Some balls swing, some balls seam a load, some don't, it's a bit harder to line up than the red ball.
"It's certainly more challenging opening the batting and I've said it before, but it's not a bad thing. If you can get in opening the batting you can make some really big scores. That's the positive side of it. And obviously coming out at four or five is probably a little bit better in Australia, but it changes everywhere.
"I haven't got too much preference. I think any batter would say, even Marnus jokes around about batting five, it is probably the best spot to bat because you sort of hide from the new ball a little bit. But in all honesty the last wicket we played on was pretty good. The ball really didn't do too much for the majority of the game. This game, this ball has been very different."