SYDNEY (AP) — Veteran Australia batter Usman Khawaja has announced he will retire from international cricket after the fifth Ashes test beginning Sunday at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
It will be the 39-year-old Khawaja's 88th and final test — played at the ground where he began his first-class career.
Khawaja informed his teammates on Friday morning that he would be retiring 15 years after making his test debut in 2011.
Australia coach Andrew McDonald earlier this week guaranteed Khawaja’s spot in the side for the SCG test but would not guarantee the left-hander’s future beyond that.
Australia, with a 3-1 lead going into the fifth test, has retained the Ashes.
Khawaja moved to Sydney from Pakistan as a child and scored his first Ashes century at the SCG with 171 against England in 2018.
It was also at that the SCG where he revived his career at age 35, scoring twin centuries against England when Travis Head missed a test in 2022 through COVID. That prompted one of the great late-career revivals, as Khawaja hit seven centuries in his next two years back in the side.
Khawaja’s position had come under scrutiny this season after being unable to open in the first Ashes test in Perth due to back spasms and then missing the Brisbane test with the injury.
He was then initially left out in Adelaide until Steve Smith’s vertigo allowed him to return, before an 82 in the first innings there ensured he would stay in the side for the fourth test in Melbourne.
Khawaja has scored 6,206 runs at an average of 43.49 in his 87 tests with 16 centuries and 28 half-centuries.
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Australia's Travis Head, right, is congratulated by teammate Usman Khawaja after reaching 50 runs during play on day three of the third Ashes cricket test between England and Australia in Adelaide, Australia, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/James Elsby)
Australia's Usman Khawaja sign autograph to fans after they won the third Ashes cricket test match against England in Adelaide, Australia, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025 (AP Photo/James Elsby)
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro left a hospital in capital Brasilia on Thursday, a week after he underwent a double hernia surgery. A car took the embattled ex-leader back to the federal police headquarters where he is serving his 27-year prison sentence for leading a coup d'etat aimed at keeping him in office.
Hospital DF Star confirmed Bolsonaro was released after some other minor medical procedures after the double hernia surgery that was completed without complications.
Brazil’s Supreme Court approved the release of the former president, who governed from 2019 to 2022, for the surgery.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who sentenced Bolsonaro to prison, denied the former president’s request for house arrest after he leaves the hospital.
Bolsonaro has undergone several other medical procedures since he was stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign rally in 2018.
Bolsonaro has no contact with the few other inmates at the federal police headquarters in Brasilia, where he is held and where his 12-square-meter (around 130-square-foot) room has a bed, a private bathroom, air conditioning, a television and a desk.
In December, Bolsonaro shook Brazilian politics again by appointing his eldest son, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, to become his political party’s presidential candidate in next year’s election, challenging incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Neither Flávio Bolsonaro nor former first-lady Michelle Bolsonaro made comments about the former leader returning to prison after his hospitalization.
Michelle Bolsonaro said in her social media channels that “there is a Brazil of good people which loves you and prays for you.”
“We will beat the bad days,” she wrote.
Bolsonaro and several of his allies were convicted in September by a panel of Supreme Court justices of attempting to overthrow Brazil’s democratic system following his 2022 election defeat.
The plot included plans to kill Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and de Moraes. There was also a plan to encourage an insurrection in early 2023.
Bolsonaro was also convicted on charges that include leading an armed criminal organization and attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law. He has denied any wrongdoing.
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The shadow of a supporter of former President Jair Bolsonaro is cast on an image of him displayed outside the hospital where he was transported from prison for surgery the next day, in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
