When Usman Khawaja walks out to bat in the Sheffield Shield final, he will have the opportunity to make runs in front of his fiercest critic.
Queensland Cricket boss Joe Dawes is in Adelaide for the decider, after duelling press conferences that were nearly two years in the making.
The unsightly row raised plenty of eyebrows around the country, in large part because it represented a rare level of infighting in the state that most likes to talk about its men’s cricket team as a brotherhood. But if Dawes and Khawaja are brothers, their relationship had come to resemble that of Cain and Abel, or William and Harry.
Star Queensland and Australia opener Usman Khawaja.Credit: Getty Images
Where in South Australia, a 29-year Shield drought has had much to do with disconnection and self-serving clubs, the Queensland fracas has highlighted a chasm between Khawaja and the players of Dawes’ generation.
That’s not exactly new in Australian cricket, given the recent fights between Pat Cummins’ team and former coach Justin Langer’s mates.
But it is far more intense in Queensland because the past player lobby in the state is both highly organised and extremely powerful. Nowhere else in Australia is a retired player body like the Bulls Masters as visible or as successful – so much so that the organisation founded by Jimmy Maher and Ian Healy in 2010 has now served as a sponsor of Queensland Cricket for seven years.
This year, too, is the 30th anniversary of the season that made the Bulls Masters possible – 1994-95, when Queensland won the Shield for the first time after more than 60 years of failures. Maher and Healy were part of that group, and Dawes started turning out for the Bulls a couple of years later.
Those players rejoice in tales of how much that win, and playing for Queensland in general, meant to them. Of injuries ignored to push through, of hard luck tales like those of former paceman Greg Rowell (now a Cricket Australia director) and backup wicketkeeper Gavin Fitness, who both missed the 1995 final, and of sheer desperation to play for the state.
And it is the fact that Khawaja is just one of numerous Australian players rested from multiple Shield matches in recent seasons that rankles most with the Dawes generation.
Healy, the deputy chair of Queensland Cricket, is ever-present on the airwaves in Brisbane through his SEN morning radio show. After Dawes’ comments at Allan Border Field, it was Healy who fired the follow-up salvo.
“Our cricket needs to be built on integrity, skill and ‘ticker’, not absence,” he thundered.
The public slanging match has its roots in the winter of 2023, when Khawaja was churning out runs during the Ashes in England and Queensland Cricket was making leadership changes.
Khawaja has stood his ground.Credit: Getty Images
Healy and Dawes were unveiled as deputy chair and high-performance chief on the same day in October, not long before it emerged that Khawaja would be resting from Shield games at the start of the season at Cricket Australia’s request.
There was muttering of discontent with this in Queensland past player circles, especially because Khawaja was captain of the side. So it came to pass in 2024 that Khawaja gave up the job, which passed to Marnus Labuschagne rather than gloveman and long-time back-up skipper Jimmy Peirson.
Labuschagne, is one of the most eager Shield participants, and in that sense fulfils the platonic ideal of a generation of state cricketers who bled for the Bulls before Twenty20 and franchise cricket existed.
But the pragmatism of CA in 2025 – underlined by how Khawaja recounted that national team coach Andrew McDonald said he had no problem with the 38-year-old going to Melbourne for the Formula 1 after deciding he was not up to playing in the final Shield game of the regular season – does not sit comfortably with Queenslanders of another era.
Then, of course, there are the political differences between the antagonists. Dawes is a former schoolmate of federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, a fellow former member of the Queensland Police, and even worked as a staffer for him at one time. Khawaja, meanwhile, counts Treasurer Jim Chalmers among his friends.
It was telling that, on the weekend before the squad travelled to Adelaide, Khawaja spent time with junior cricketers participating in his foundation. Increasingly, Khawaja is focused on opportunities for the cricketers and immigrants to follow him, rather than spending too much time venerating those who came before.
As for how the saga will affect Khawaja against South Australia’s quality pace attack, Labuschagne noted his top-order compatriot’s determination.
“If anything, it will probably improve his performance,” Labuschagne said. “He loves a big moment. I don’t think he’ll have any issues going out there and performing at his best.”
Performing, as it happens, in front of Joe Dawes.
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