Usman Khawaja has leapt to the defence of fellow Australian batsman David Warner, saying he has “paid his dues” over the 2018 ball-tampering scandal.
Warner came under fire from former Aussie fast bowler Mitchell Johnson after being named in Australia’s 14-man squad for the three-match home Test series against Pakistan.
The first game begins in Perth on Thursday, December 14.
And 37-year-old opener Warner has spoken of his dream of bowing out of his Test career in the final game at Sydney Cricket Ground, his home stadium, in January.
But, writing in a newspaper column on Sunday, Johnson said Warner did not merit his place in the side on form and should not be given a hero’s send-off because of the ball-tampering scandal.
Warner and former captain Steve Smith were handed 12-month bans after the 'sandpaper-gate' controversy during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town in March 2018.
Johnson, who took 313 Test wickets in an eight-year career that ended in 2015, said of his former teammate: “As we prepare for David Warner's farewell series, can somebody please tell me why?
“Why a struggling Test opener gets to nominate his own retirement date. And why a player at the centre of one of the biggest scandals in Australian cricket history warrants a hero's send-off?
“It's been five years and David Warner has still never really owned the ball-tampering scandal.”
But current teammate Khawaja hit back at the comments yesterday, saying: “Warner and Smith are heroes in my mind.
“They missed a year of cricket through dark times. No one’s perfect. Mitchell Johnson’s not perfect.
“What they have done for the game – how they have grown the game – far outweighs anything else they have done.
“To say Dave Warner or anyone else involved in ‘sandpaper-gate’ is not a hero … I strongly disagree because they have paid their dues. A year out of cricket is a long time.”
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Date started: early 2020
Founders: Khawla Hammad and Inas Abu Shashieh
Based: Abu Dhabi
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Number of staff: 4
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Learn more about Qasr Al Hosn
In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
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Based: Muscat
Launch year: 2018
Number of employees: 40
Sector: Online food delivery
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Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
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If you go...
Etihad Airways flies from Abu Dhabi to Kuala Lumpur, from about Dh3,600. Air Asia currently flies from Kuala Lumpur to Terengganu, with Berjaya Hotels & Resorts planning to launch direct chartered flights to Redang Island in the near future. Rooms at The Taaras Beach and Spa Resort start from 680RM (Dh597).
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Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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US-based BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $5.98 trillion of assets under management as of the end of last year. The New York firm run by Larry Fink provides investment management services to institutional clients and retail investors including governments, sovereign wealth funds, corporations, banks and charitable foundations around the world, through a variety of investment vehicles.
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Libya's Gold
UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves.
The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.
Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.
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Directed by: Pete Doctor
Rating: 4 stars