Usman Khawaja takes his own road

In the afterglow of his Test debut, Usman Khawaja could have taken the popular road to India and accepted a gilt-edged IPL contract. In stead he thought about what he needed to do next and headed to Derbyshire, says Chloe Saltau, writing in the Saturday Age.

As comfortable as he [Khawaja] looked against England's fast bowlers, and as much fun as he had, he felt inexperienced. He knew ... his cricket education was incomplete. He went to English county Derbyshire to fill in some gaps. ''When I played for Australia I qualified to go over and I thought it would be silly of me not to take the opportunity because I could play against different players on different surfaces with different balls, a whole new style of cricket,'' Khawaja told The Saturday Age.

He likes to solve problems; a skill some older figures in Australian cricket believe is uncommon among the country's younger batsmen. It suggests, too, that Khawaja will demand the same excellence of himself as he builds a cricket career as he did when he was studying for a bachelor of aviation and learning to fly commercial planes. ''Flying is the kind of thing, you need to have your head on. When I did do it I was fully into it and I was switched on. Now, everything is cricket.''