Khawaja to replace Marsh for Boxing Day Test against Windies

Melbourne—The selectors dropped Australian 32-year-old top-order batsman Shaun Marsh from the side for the second Boxing Day Test against West Indies, despite scoring brilliant 182 in the first Test at Hobart to secure the victory inside three days.

Ahead of the second test in Melbourne, Pakistan-born Usman Khawaja returns to the Australia side after recovering from month long hamstring injury during the Australia-New Zealand series last month.

Khawaja scored 174 and 121 in the first two Tests against New Zealand last month and proved his fitness with an unbeaten 109 off 70 balls for Sydney Thunders in the ongoing Twenty20 Big Bash League last weekend.

Marsh and opener Joe Burns had reportedly been competing for one place. There was no place for Marsh, who hit his highest Test score of 182 in Australia’s innings that thumped Windies by 212 runs and an innings in the first Test at Bellerive Oval in Hobart.

Khawaja will reclaim his No.3 spot where as, Smith, who sat out of the opening week of the Big Bash League to rest his sore knee and hip is fully fit to bat at No. 4 after playing at No. 3 position in Adelaide and Hobart. 

The desire for consistency at the top of the order goes in the favour of Joe, even though the inconsistency in form. Joe, who retained the spot, has scored just 98 runs at an average of 19.6 in his five test innings since he scored 71 and 129 in the first test against New Zealand in Brisbane in November.

“Joe has been playing quite good cricket. He scored a hundred only a couple of Tests ago so that was a big part of it.  There were lots of talks about it,” Australia captain Steve Smith told reporters at the MCG ahead of the second Boxing Day Test.

“Shaun is obviously really unlucky to miss out after a brilliant 180 in the last test match and 49 under a bit of pressure in the test before,” he added.

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