Sydney, Dec 31 (IANS) Former England captain Michael Vaughan has backed Usman Khawaja to retire on his own terms after playing the fifth Ashes Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, which starts on January 4.

Speculation has been rife about whether Khawaja’s 88th Test at the SCG against England will be his final game for Australia. Khawaja, who turned 39 during the third Ashes match in Adelaide, has looked assured since moving to the middle order.

But with selectors under pressure to refresh an ageing Australian Test side, the Sydney fixture is widely viewed as a possible farewell for Khawaja. “I would say to Usman, ‘Don’t let them decide. You decide your destiny’. When someone has been playing for so long, we’ve just got to let them decide,” Vaughan was quoted as saying by The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday.

“Usman has had an incredible career and not many get the chance to say goodbye on their own terms at their own venue. If he doesn’t do that, he runs the risk of his career ending not on his own terms. I can’t think of a better way to say goodbye than at his home ground in an Ashes series.

“If Uzzie has got the energy and capacity to really want to fight on, yeah, I could see that happening, but leaving in Sydney in an Ashes series sounds pretty good to me. The likes of Matt Renshaw, Nathan McSweeney, Campbell Kellaway and Ollie Peake, they’re the players we’ve got to get into the Australian side in the next year or so,” he added.

England head into the SCG Test under pressure to avoid a heavy defeat, with Vaughan adding that the result is likely to shape the future of the Brendon McCullum–Ben Stokes leadership combination. “For the future and for this management in particular, they need to win a strong game of cricket here … that’s not a two-dayer.

“For this management to carry on, the likes of Ben and Baz – I’m pretty sure they will carry on – but I think they need a good week for that to be absolutely rock solid. There’s a huge appetite within the group to keep (McCullum) on. But fundamentally, if they get pummelled in Sydney, there needs to be some honest conversations.

“I think chopping and changing is not necessarily the right thing for English cricket. Whatever happens at the end of this tour, they’ve got to accept that they got a lot of things wrong. If they’re going to be so stubborn to think that they were a bit unlucky, or things didn’t quite go the way they wanted … well, we have a problem going forward.

“The key is maturity and that’s the one thing that I think this team can be a lot better at, in terms of the way they play and talk. If they can accept that, I have no problem with the management staying the same,” he concluded.

–IANS

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