Cricket: Pakistan-born Khawaja gets Indian visa

Khawaja is on the 20-man long list to represent NSW at the Twenty20 event.


Afp August 10, 2011
Cricket: Pakistan-born Khawaja gets Indian visa

SYDNEY: Australian batsman Usman Khawaja was Wednesday issued an Indian visa for next month's Twenty20 Champions League tournament, following a brief delay allegedly related to his birth in Pakistan.

Cricket New South Wales said Khawaja was cleared to travel to India by the High Commission in Sydney early Wednesday, after a "stoppage" the 24-year-old player had claimed was due to his country of birth.

"We are delighted that this has been settled and we thank the Indian Consul-General, Mr Amit Dasgupta, for his prompt attention in resolving the matter," said Cricket NSW chairman Harry Harinath.

Khawaja is on the 20-man long list to represent NSW at the Twenty20 event and cricket officials said he could now join the squad if he is among the final 15 selected later this week.

The Champions League T20 is scheduled in India from September 23 through October 9.

The left-hander vented his anger about the delay to his visa on the social media site Twitter Tuesday, calling on Indian visa officials to "sort their issues out".

"Refusing to let me travel to India as an Australian, because I wasn't born here. Wow," Khawaja wrote.

In an exchange with his Portuguese-born New South Wales team-mate Moises Henriques, Khawaja said it "wasn't that I wasn't born here but where I was, brother".

Khawaja, the first Muslim to wear the baggy green for Australia and also a qualified pilot, made his Test debut for Australia in the fifth match of the Ashes series in Sydney in January and signed with Derbyshire later that month.

COMMENTS (26)

DarkStar(Karachi) | 13 years ago | Reply

@rock: Bharti is a proper word for an indian. It is also a female first name and also a family name. Bharti is the proper word for indian in some dialects of Hindi, in Urdu and Punjabi. Even punjabi and indian newspapers and tv channels in india use the word Bharti. Google and you will find many examples of the word Bharti used in the said context. A general rule of thumb in urdu is:

Punjab.....Punjabi Gujarat.....Gujarati. Hindustan.....Hindustani.... Pakistan....Pakistani.... Malabar......Malabari.... Bengal......Bengali.... BHARAT......BHARATI.....

rock | 13 years ago | Reply

@DarkStar(Karachi): Name of the country is India, hindustan, Bharat. People are known as Indians, hindustani, Bhartiya. Bharatis word does not exist. When you say bharati it is basically used as female name. bharatis does not mean people of India. To call people of india you have use word bharatiya. learn some basics. You even don't know how to call indians in local language. funny.

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