Ashes 2019: Ben Cutting criticizes Australia’s decision of dropping Usman Khawaja for Manchester Test

The Ashes 2019 series will resume after a short break as England takes on Australia in the fourth Test to be played at Old Trafford in Manchester. The Test will begin from 4th September and with the series leveled at 1-1, is the most important matches of the series given that the victory will more or less be in control of the series going into the last Test.

The Australian team was still seething from the loss in the third Test match at Leeds, which they had almost won given that England needed more than 70 runs to win when their ninth wicket fell. Bad decision making with respect to DRS usage and spirited batting from Ben Stokes took the match out of their hands. They missed Steve Smith a lot and decided to make some big changes to their 12-man squad for Manchester Test, surprisingly leaving out Usman Khawaja, who captained them in the match against Derbyshire.

Ben Cutting calls the decision to drop Khawaja ridiculous

Australian all-rounder Ben Cutting took to Twitter in order to criticize the decision of team management to leave the left-hander out to bring in Steve Smith. Though it seems like this was done in order to address the number of left-handers in the top order, Cutting was shocked at the decision, given Khawaja’s numbers in Test cricket.

Cutting tweeted, “Captain the tour match, score 72 but thanks for your service. How do you not select a bloke who avgs 40 in one of the most important test matches in recent history? The way Jofra is going, Uzi will bat 2nd innings as concussion replacement for someone anyway.”

Captain the tour match, score 72 but thanks for your service. How do you not select a bloke who avgs 40 in one of the most important test matches in recent history? The way Jofra is going, Uzi will bat 2nd innings as concussion replacement for someone anyway.

— Ben Cutting (@Cuttsy31) September 3, 2019

Khawaja has not made a half-century in the three Tests he has played in the Ashes but captained Australia to an innings win over Derbyshire in which he showed sparks of returning to form. Instead, Marnus Labuschagne is expected to move to no.3 spot and Smith regains his no.4 spot in the batting order, with Marcus Harris retaining his opener’s spot. Khawaja has played 44 Tests, making 2887 runs with 8 centuries, 14 half-centuries with the highest score of 174 at an average of 40.66.