‘Bowl on off stump and don’t wind him up!’

Usman Khawaja batted for 796 minutes in the opening match of the series at Edgbaston, the longest that any Aussie batter has ever spent at the crease in an Ashes Test.

Little wonder Ollie Robinson got a bit carried away when he finally ended his first-innings resistance on Sunday morning.

Before the series, all the attention had been focused on Steve Smith, Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne.

But as the two teams head to Lord’s for the second Test starting on Wednesday, one of the major questions occupying the minds of England captain Ben Stokes, coach Brendon McCullum and their bowling attack, is how the hell you dismiss a man who, since returning to the Australia Test side in 2022 after a three-year absence, has scored 1,827 runs at an average of over 67.

Before his heroics in Birmingham Khawaja had played seven Tests in England – including this month’s World Test Championship final against India – averaging just 17. He was as close as you could get to a Baggy Green-wearing walking wicket. That’s clearly no longer the case.

And while England’s bowlers celebrated their plans largely coming off against the top three batters in world cricket, the 36-year-old Khawaja is suddenly an unsolved puzzle – and one that no amount of funky fields or in-your-face send-offs look like solving.

“Listen, mate, if you’re trying to wind up Uzzie then you’re wasting your time,” says his former coach at Queensland, Stuart Law. “He was brought up in New South Wales but he’s a true Queenslander. We drive people mad in Australia because we’re so laid back. It’s like, yeh, I’ll do it tomorrow, what’s the rush?

“People have called Uzzie lazy in the past, but he’s far from lazy, he just has that Queensland attitude to life.”

And to opening too, it would seem. If England’s madcap batting efforts were akin to someone riding downhill with no breaks juggling six cricket balls, then Khawaja’s first and second-innings epics appeared to have been constructed while he was wearing slippers and smoking a pipe. What’s the hurry?

“Those innings were classic Uzzie,” says former Derbyshire coach Karl Krikken, who led the county to their most recent piece of silverware – the County Championship Division Two title in 2012 – with Khawaja as the club’s overseas player.

“He had only just broken into the Australia side when he first arrived with us and one of my abiding memories of that season is Uzzie sat in the dressing room with his guitar. He took it everywhere.

“What did he play? A bit of Oasis, a bit of [Bob] Dylan. I didn’t hear much singing but he was pretty good!”

Given his current form, he would probably clean up in an Ashes X-Factor contest too.

But Krikken believes England’s plans in the second innings – when Khawaja scored 65 in 197 balls – were right on the money.

“If you bowl short to Uzzie then he’s going to murder you,” he says. “If you give him width then he’ll do the same. But I think England bowled much better at him second time around. You need to get it on a length on that off stump. Even then, he played very well. He’s patient, he has been around a long time and he knows his game inside out.

“Australia have plenty of players who can score at a run a ball. He can do that too, but he’s also happy to be the man that an innings can revolve around. The others can do the spectacular stuff, he can just grind England down.”

This most undemonstrative of cricketers is a hugely popular figure, particularly in Derbyshire, where his contribution in 2011 and 2012 left an indelible mark on those who played alongside him.

“He’s just a great bloke,” says Tim Groenewald, the pace bowler who played for the county from 2009-14. “What you see is what you get, there’s no side to him.

“He was a bit of a joker, he played a lot of pranks on the guys and he was a lot of fun. He was a great player to have around the dressing room. I’m still in touch him every now and again and I’m buzzing the way his career has turned out.

“I don’t think England would have underestimated him, but I think the focus would have been on Smith, Labuschagne and Head – the thought would have been that either Jimmy Anderson or Stuart Broad would knock Uzzie over. As it is, he’s the one that went out and won them the game.

“I couldn’t tell you how to get him out – but the one thing I would say is not to drop short.

“I played with a lot of overseas players in county cricket and he was right up there. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone so good against the short ball. County bowlers quickly stayed away from bowling anything short or giving him any width. I remember a game at Middlesex and Steven Finn was bowling pretty quick – we were just amazed at the amount of time he had.”

England have had some time to digest the lessons learned from that first Test. Having kept the world’s top three batters quiet, they now have to do the same to Khawaja.

But he will be tuning up his game – and probably his guitar – in response.