Usman Khawaja reveals why he kept debilitating illness a secret

Usman Khawaja was just 22 and revelling in being part of the New South Wales cricket team when he was diagnosed with a potentially crippling disease that he would keep secret his whole career.

Only now, having retired from international cricket after Australia's Ashes win in January, is Usman revealing that he lived with rheumatoid arthritis while playing 88 Tests for Australia.

Even good friends such as his childhood cricket buddy David Warner and Test teammate Michael Hussey were unaware of the diagnosis that Usman thought would end his cricket dream before it really took off.

In fact, Usman says that when doctors initially battled to diagnose the cause of debilitating pain in his left knee, he feared he had a terminal illness.

"I genuinely thought I was going to die," Usman, 39, tells Australian Story. "I went from this athlete who was playing professional cricket to not being able to walk 10 metres to the bathroom."

It's another remarkable story to add to Usman's eventful career that saw him score 6,229 Test runs, including 16 centuries, as well as two one-day international tons for Australia.

He was the first Pakistani-born person to play Test cricket for Australia, and the first Muslim.

He was one of the most dropped players in Australian Test history, losing his place in the team eight times but always finding his way back, most notably in Sydney in 2022 when he scored twin centuries at the age of 35.

His experience of racial and religious vilification would lead him to speak out about discrimination, in cricket and more broadly, contributing to a greater cultural awareness within the Australian squad.

Says Todd Greenberg, Cricket Australia's CEO: "He's broken the mould in so many different ways. He'll leave the culture of Australian cricket in far better shape than what he found it."

Now, Usman is keen to give hope to those living with an autoimmune disease, detailing his health battle in his soon-to-be-released autobiography, Sabr.

"If a person can play at the top level … as a professional cricketer with rheumatoid arthritis, then I think a lot of other people can achieve a lot, too," he says.

Given the cricket rumour mill, Usman admits it's surprising the secret he's kept since the 2009 off-season never got out. He told medical and coaching staff and cricket administrators but not a single player because he did not want special treatment, or for the disease to be used against him.

Usman manages his condition with regular injections of a drug which he calls a "godsend" and credits with getting him back to the crease about six months later.

"Without that drug," Usman says, "I would never have played cricket ever again or even lived a normal life again."

By January 2011, he had become the 419th Test player to be handed a baggy green, and the tumultuous and influential international career of Usman Khawaja was on its way.

Breaking the 'typical' cricket player mould

As a cricket-mad immigrant boy growing up in Sydney, Usman found it hard to relate to the Australian cricket team.

Its beer-drinking and larrikin culture felt foreign to the way he was being brought up by his parents, Tariq and Fozia Khawaja, who had immigrated from Pakistan when Usman was four.

He wasn't keen on the sledging, either, having copped racial abuse on the sporting field — mostly from parents.

"As great cricketers as they were," Usman says of the Australian team of the early 1990s, "it kind of felt like that bogan vibe, that same vibe [from those] parents."

That vibe changed for Usman in 1999, when players he could relate to — Adam Gilchrist, a left-handed batsman like him, and fast bowler Brett Lee — arrived on the scene.

"They're the ones that dragged me over to the Australian cricket team … I started supporting Australia way more and then eventually after that it was just Australia, Australia, Australia."

But despite his obvious skills, the Pakistani/Indian community told him he would never make the Australian team.

"They're like, 'Oh yeah, you're good but you'll never play for Australia because they don't pick our kind, they don't pick brown people to play for Australia, there's too much racism. You'll never get there.'"

But then, Ricky Ponting broke his finger in December 2010.

And Usman got his big break.

"I was a Pakistani boy debuting for the Australian cricket team," Usman says. "It's a big deal."

The crowd applauded as the debutante made his way onto the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 2011. Usman was nervous, hoping not to get a duck. His father Tariq recalls sitting in the SCG stands with Fozia, praying.

Usman scored two off his first ball. The second ball? A four from a well-timed pull shot.

Michael Hussey remembers team members jumping out of their seats, applauding. "You could see he had the talent, had the ability, and also had the courage to go out and play his way," he says.

Usman scored 37 that day. But by September, he was dropped for the first time. He made it back in November to play South Africa, scoring 65 in one innings, his first half century, but after a December series against New Zealand, he was dropped again.

Usman says that early in his Test career, he was on the wrong end of "fifty-fifty" selection decisions.

He believes unfair stereotypes that subcontinent players "don't work as hard as Aussies" were at play.

"I wasn't your typical Australian cricketer … I didn't drink alcohol. I prayed. I did Ramadan. My name was Usman Khawaja," he says.

Usman decided he needed a fresh start. He moved to Brisbane in 2012, taking a big pay cut to play for Queensland.

"It was the hardest but the best decision I've made in my life," he says.

Bowled over by love

Being happy off the field goes a long way to playing well, Usman believes, and he has no greater proof of that than the period when he was dating his wife-to-be, Rachel.

It was late 2015, Usman was back in the Test team after two years, and he was firing.

"I just could not stop scoring runs," says Usman, who notched four Test centuries that summer.

"It was 100 per cent because of Rachel. I was absolutely, head over heels, madly in love. I was so happy off the field."

They'd met in Brisbane through a mutual friend and Rachel admits she knew little about Usman's on-again off-again Test career.

"Unless you were a Warnie or a 'Haydos' or a Langer, those names that really stand out, I really wasn't across cricket," Rachel says.

Raised Catholic, she converted to Islam before their marriage in April 2018. "It was obviously a very significant moment in my life," she says. "I've become more and more grateful to Uzzy for introducing me to Islam. I see it as the gift that he's given me."

Usman says Rachel, the mother of his three daughters, is one of the greatest gifts God has given him.

"Before Rachel, there was zero 100s for international cricket. After Rachel, I scored 18 100s for Australia at international level. She was a big part of [that] because she was the only one I could actually open up to after a tour," he says.

There was much to talk about after the Test match in South Africa in March 2018: the infamous Sandpapergate tour in which Australia was sprung cheating by roughening a ball with sandpaper to make it swing abnormally.

It rocked Australian cricket and led to the suspension of Usman's mate and then-vice captain David Warner, captain Steve Smith and the man caught with the sandpaper, batsman Cameron Bancroft.

Usman says he felt sorry for the players because of the heavy penalty and worldwide disgrace they suffered but says the controversy changed Australian cricket for the better.

"Up to that point, we were playing a certain brand of cricket which wasn't in the spirit of the game a lot of the time," he says. "And I think we've actually come out of it a much better team.

"A bit of humility came back in … I think that was a silver lining for the Australian cricket team."

Usman Khawaja's proudest moment

Rachel remembers sitting at the SCG with their then-18-month-old daughter, Aisha, watching Usman's score tick towards 100 in the match he was never supposed to play.

A week before, the 35-year-old was carrying drinks, thrilled to have made it into the squad for the Ashes series of 2021/22. He hadn't played a Test for more than two years and was happy to treat his drink duties as his "swan song".

Then Travis Head got COVID — and Usman was called up for the New Year's Test.

He reached a half century. Then he made it into the 80s and Rachel recalls thinking: "No, it's too good. It's not going to happen.'"

It did. Usman made 100, adding another 37 before getting out. Come the second innings, he scored 101 not out.

"Honestly, I experienced a fairytale," Usman says. "I literally could not in my wildest dream have ever written up a script like that."

It was the start of his second wind in Test cricket. Before that SCG game, he'd played 44 Tests. That 2022 match would be the first of another 44.

"The second half, I enjoyed much more than the first," he says. "I was scoring runs, going around the world. Absolute gift."

A big part of his enjoyment was the change in culture in the Australian team, with Usman thriving under captain Pat Cummins and coach Andrew McDonald.

He'd grown more confident in himself, too, and started to speak out more about racism, injustice and diversity in cricket.

"I definitely got more vocal after I came back in the team because I was like, 'I think God's given me this platform to actually speak up for people,'" he says.

Then, the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel happened on October 7, 2023, and days later, Usman's social media feeds were filled with more horror: Israel's devastating retaliatory attacks on Gaza and the rising death toll of Palestinians.

He believed the mainstream media was downplaying the bombing and killing in Gaza and that the deaths of Ukrainians in that country's war with Russia were given greater prominence.

"It was a racial issue," he says. "The [Ukrainian] kids were white. The Gaza kids were brown."

He decided he had to make a stand. Without telling anyone, he bought red, black and green pens, [the colours of Palestine], scrawled "All lives are equal" on his white shoes and headed out to a training session.

"I was scared because I didn't know what was going to come out of it," Usman says. "But I had to do it."

It blew up. The International Cricket Council (ICC) banned Usman from wearing the shoes during the match. Cricket Australia said it supported player's rights to express opinions but it expected the ICC's rules to be followed.

Usman copped abuse and support but the controversy went on for weeks, opening a discussion which he says needed to be aired.

"I look back on it and everything I've done in cricket, all the runs I scored and all the matches I've won, the most proudest thing I've done in cricket is probably that," Usman says.

Now retired from international cricket, he continues to play Big Bash League while building the Usman Khawaja Foundation, helping kids from refugee, immigrant, Indigenous, remote and lower socioeconomic backgrounds with educational support and cricket training.

Some of them will dream of playing for the Australian cricket team and Usman hopes that his success and advocacy will make their path a little easier.

Cricket in Australia is becoming more inclusive, he says, but it's still a very "white" sport and there's a lot more work to do.

"As much as I want to think that it has fully changed, it hasn't, because if it had, there would've been another Usman Khawaja to replace me," he says.

"But there's not."

Watch Usman Khawaja's Australian Story, Unbeaten, Monday 8pm (AEST) on ABC TV and ABC iview.