the first two tamely at Chennai and Hyderabad. To his surprise, he was informed by the Arthur he was \u201csuspended\u201d from playing the next Test for not submitting the homework given to him. The team management, instead, chose to go with Steve Smith for the Mohali Test. Khawaja was not the only one. Allrounder Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson and James Pattinson were other players involved in what was infamously called as \u2018homework gate\u2019.
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Khawaja, who\u2019s had a stop-start career, and not wholly due to cricketing reasons, was back in India for the 2017 tour. But he wasn\u2019t picked for any of the four Tests, ostensibly because he couldn\u2019t play spin and all he did was carry drinks onto the field.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOn this third Test tour, the 36-year-old Pakistan-born left-hander, has easily been the best batter from the visiting team. And on Thursday, he got the monkey off his back with a fighting hundred on Day 1 of the fourth Test against a quality spin attack.
Khawaja was asked if he did feel vulnerable against spin bowling early on in his career. He said, \u201cMaybe to some extent. But think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy in its own way. People start saying that then perception is reality. People were like \u2018you can\u2019t play spin\u2019. I probably started believing it myself.
\u201cI didn\u2019t really get the support from the people around me at the time. Didn\u2019t feel like the team really supported me, didn\u2019t feel like the coaching staff and selectors really supported me through that journey. It just made it so hard. Whether I was or wasn\u2019t, yes, I\u2019m a better player of spin now, no doubt about that.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cI have more shots, better defence. But I didn\u2019t really get the opportunity to learn at that early stage. Fortunately, enough I\u2019m quite stubborn so went out of my own way to learn. We had a couple of A tours here in India which helped a lot. Had to go back and figure it out all by myself.\u201d
On scoring his 14th Test hundred \u2013 and the first against India in Tests, Khawaja said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever smiled so much on getting a century, there was emotion in it, I\u2019ve done two tours of India before, carried the drinks for eight Test matches before I got a chance here,\u201d a beaming Khawaja said after the day\u2019s play.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cThroughout the middle of my career, I got told I couldn\u2019t play spin and that\u2019s why I never got an opportunity to play in India. I got an opportunity to play in a white ball series a few years ago and was man of the series (he had scored two hundreds), got an opportunity here again with the red ball.
\u201cIt\u2019s just nice to go out there and tick off a hundred in India which was something if you told me I\u2019d do, five years ago, I\u2019d think you were crazy. There was a lot of emotion, I just never expected this to happen.<\/p>\n
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