Australia opener Usman Khawaja can’t remember if he previously “smiled” as he did on Thursday after completing a very special Test hundred on Indian soil.

It is an accomplishment he hadn’t dreamt of, having carried the drinks on his previous tours of India in 2013 and 2017. Khawaja, Australia’s best batter on this tour, batted for six hours to grind down a quality attack, scoring an unbeaten 104 out of the team’s 255 for four on Thursday.

“I don’t think I have ever smiled so much on getting a century, there was emotion in it. I have done two tours of India before. Carried the drinks for eight Test matches before I got a chance,” he said.

The 36-year-old lost a lot of time when Cricket Australia tried out mediocre openers like Marcus North and Chris Rogers. “Throughout the middle of my career, I got told I couldn’t play spin and that’s why I never got an opportunity to play in India.

“It’s just nice to go out there and tick off a hundred in India which was something if you asked me five years ago or if you told me that, I would think you were crazy.

“There was a lot of emotion, I just never expected this to happen,” the Islamabad-born, Queensland-raised cricketer, said.

So did he agree with that perception in Australian cricket that he couldn’t play spin? “Maybe to some extent. But think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy in its own way. Anytime I got out to spin, people were like ‘you can’t play spin’.I probably started believing it myself,” he said.

“Fortunately enough, I am quite stubborn so went out of my own way to learn, then we had a couple of A tours here in India which helped a lot.”

Stat-o-sphere

■ Usman Khawaja registered his 14th Test century and his first against India, in Ahmedabad on Thursday.

■ This was Khawaja’s sixth Test century since January 2022 in 28 innings. Only England’s Jonny Bairstow (in 19 inns) and Joe Root (31 inns) have six centuries since then. However, no opener in this period has scored more centuries than Khawaja (4).

■ Of his 14 Test hundreds, Thursday’s was the slowest, coming off 246 balls. His previous slowest was during the Ashes at the SCG in January 2018, when he made 171 off 222 balls.

■ Since 2000, Khawaja is the fourth Australian opener to get a Test century in India. The others are Matthew Hayden (2), Simon Katich (1) and Shane Watson (1).

MOHANDAS MENON