This was said in an article by Cricket Australia. The star batsman is juggling his religious obligations and also the commitments to the national team during the ongoing tour in the Caribbean,
Khawaja made his highest one-day international score of 98 against the West Indies in St Kitts earlier this week and will be a crucial in the upcoming matches against South Africa and West Indies to qualify for the final of the tri-nation tournament.
The Pakistan-origin batsman has earlier spoken how his faith has helped him adopt a more relaxed approach to his cricket, and that he has been fasting during wherever possible during the series
He said that playing and training makes it difficult to fast every day and his performances on the field are the number one focus for him.
“I’ve done half the days so far. I did it one training day last week and I was absolutely buggered,” he said with a smile.
“It’s been alright. It’s something that I really enjoy doing, but if it’s affecting my cricket or my training in too much of a negative way then I probably won’t do it. It just depends on the situation.”
He said that he strongly believe in fasting and loves doing it and does everything to avoid missing it. However, the lack of water can affect the game as you become slow without realising it.
This situation is not common for the Australian team but Khawaja has been working together with the coaching and fitness team, and their special concern for nutrition has helped to make the right decisions for him.
Khawaja said that he is not forced to do anything as they know that he would not do anything which can jeopardise the team in any way. He said he makes sure he does everything as well as he could just like he has done since the last ten years when he has been playing cricket.
“Sometimes people forget that I’m doing it because I don’t like to talk about it. I think that might have happened last week when we were doing that big fielding session. But they’re quite understanding about it now since I’ve been doing it for so long, so it’s been good.”
