Usman Khawaja called a curry muncher, Len Pascoe changed his surname because of baiting by Chappell brothers

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https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/usman-khawajas-journey-
from-being-called-a-curry-muncher-to-silencing-critics-with-tons-of-
runs-8424380/

Usman Khawaja’s journey: From being called a curry muncher to silencing
critics with tons of runs

Over the past year, the Pakistan-born Australian batsman has scored over
1,000 runs in Test cricket to silence those prejudiced against him because
of his colour; His mentor talks about Khawaja's journey

“F***ing curry muncher.” A frequent abuse that a very young Usman Khawaja
would hear not long after he moved to Australia when he was 5.

Last week, he was not only voted as Australian Test player of the year but
also picked for the biggest community-impact award for the social work he
does with his Khawaja foundation for minorities, migrants, refugees, and
socially-impacted kids.

In a touching speech, he would talk about how he didn’t know English and
on his first day at kinder-garden, when a teacher asked him something, he
turned and told his mother, “kya bol rahi hai? (what’s she saying?). And
he thanked his mentor Bill Anderson for helping with cricket at Sydney
Grade and running his foundation.

It hasn’t been an easy journey for Khawaja but he has soldiered on, and in
the last 12 months, he has been on a run-deluge and will be one of the key
batsmen on the tour of India.

His mentor Anderson remembers a 15-year old Khawaja so shy that he “would
not even look you in your eye”.

“He is conscious of his background and where he came from – at the same
time he is very Australian,” Anderson told The Indian Express. “Everything
about him – the time he spends on video games, the social things he
indulges in even though he doesn’t drink, he is always out with his team-
mates. The fun things he does with them. We are all part of the
environment where we grew up and it’s in Australia that he grew up.”

The cricket journey wasn’t easy though. First his academics came in the
way; at one stage he broke off cricket to focus on finishing his aviation
degree and become a qualified pilot. He then re-plunged into cricket in
2008 but the journey hasn’t been easy, on and off the field.

Australia’s social historian Peter Cashman once wrote about how the pacer
Leonard Durtanovich, the son of Yugoslav immigrants, changed his surname
to Pascoe and played Test cricket as Lenny Pascoe. Cashman quoted former
Test seamer Geoff Lawson as saying that the Chappell brothers had “made a
habit of baiting Pascoe about his ethnic origins when they faced up to
him’ at domestic cricket.

In more recent times when Pakistan-born Fawad Ahmed, played ODIs for
Australia without an alcohol sponsor’s log on his jersey due to his
religious belief, the famous Australian sports stars Doug Walters, a
flamboyant batsman, and David Campese, former Australian rugby union star,
went after him. ‘I think if he doesn’t want to wear the team gear, he
should not be part of the team. Maybe if he doesn’t want to be paid,
that’s OK,” went Walters. Campese tweeted his response: ‘’Doug Walters
tells Pakistan born Fawad Ahmed: if you don’t like the VB uniform, don’t
play for Australia. Well said Doug. Tell him to go home.’

“Whenever the Australian team wasn’t successful, Uzzy would be the first
person to be dropped,” his mentor Anderson told this newspaper.

“So many times I was told by other subcontinental parents, ‘You will never
make it, you’re not the right skin colour’. No joke. That might have been
true in some respects in past eras and generations, but it just drove me
more to prove them all wrong. I wasn’t going to look back in regret,”
Khawaja has written in AthletesVoice. “Being racially vilified actually
made me stronger in many respects. I even had a couple of kids try to
fight me one day heading home from school. For no reason either! They were
in my class one second and the school bell rang – the next minute I’m just
about to leave the gates of my school and they are having a go at me …”