Few cricketers, in fact few athletes, take a public stand on contemporary issues. The usual excuse is the old chestnut: politics and sport should not mix. But whether they should or not, they do and any justification for inaction is a cop out. So when a player does take a stand, it is both unusual and admirable.

Nearly three years ago, Australia’s opening batter Usman Khawaja wore a black armband during a home Test in support of the people of Gaza. He had batted in the nets earlier with the writing “freedom is a human right” and “all lives are equal” on his shoes.

The International Cricket Council has rules banning such activity, and Khawaja was given a warning, although some ministers in his country supported his stand. But this is not about the rightness or otherwise of Khawaja’s act, it is about the courage of a sportsman, the first Muslim to play for Australia, who, knowing the consequences, still made his point.

Khawaja had earlier supported the Black Lives Matter movement and refused to wear kits with alcohol sponsorship. His stand on Gaza and other matters, including gambling advertisements, led to meetings with his country’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Cabinet.

Cricket does not encourage activism, unlike sport in the US with its Colin Kaepernick (his “taking the knee” found support around the world, including from Indian players in an ODI in Dubai), Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe who have used their stature to focus attention on social and political injustices. World heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was a hero as much for what he did as for what he didn’t do (he refused to fight in the Vietnam war and at his peak was banned from boxing for four years).

Indian cricketers are not known for taking a stand, unless it is in support of the government in power. M.S. Dhoni and his team wore camouflage caps against Australia in 2019 to show support during border tensions with Pakistan. The ICC had nothing to say about this.

Merchant takes a stand

The one Indian cricketer who did take a stand did so nearly a century ago. This was Vijay Merchant, who refused to tour England in 1932 (he was 21 and a certainty in the team) in protest against the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi. In a roundabout way, following conversations with John Arlott in 1946, Merchant might have influenced the writer into leading the fight against racism and bringing the Cape-coloured all-rounder Basil D’Oliveira to play in, and later to play for, England.

Later generations of players in India, even as they rose to the top as a team and began flexing their administrative muscle, didn’t have much to say. Even about the ills affecting the game like match-fixing or player behaviour, leave alone about injustice in any form. An honourable exception was Bishan Bedi, who often paid the price for his honesty and frankness.

If Islamabad-born Khawaja was already a hero for what he was (a pioneer in opening the doors to other south Asians), and for what he did (88 Tests as opening batter and over six thousand runs), it now emerges that there is another aspect that demands respect. He has revealed that he played international cricket after being diagnosed at 22 with rheumatoid arthritis, a debilitating condition that was a constant threat and one which nobody in Australian cricket knew about. Not even his best friends David Warner and Mike Hussey.

“I genuinely thought I was going to die,” Khawaja told ABC Sport recently, “I went from this athlete who was playing professional cricket to not being able to walk 10 metres to the bathroom.”

The reason for keeping the condition a secret tells us all we need to know about the player, the battles he faced for acceptance, and the atmosphere in Australian cricket. “I didn’t want anyone to use it against me,” Khawaja said. “I felt like I already had all these stereotypes I was trying to beat in Australian cricket, and I didn’t want to use that as an excuse.”

As Cricket Australia chief Todd Greenberg said when Khawaja retired, his big secret still safe then, “he will leave a far bigger legacy than his cricket statistics.”