McDonald confirms "further investigation" into Khawaja's back spasm; says "a lot of consider" for top-order shuffle after Head's Perth blitz

Melbourne [Australia], November 24 : Australian head coach Andrew McDonald confirmed that further investigation will be carried out for opener Usman Khawaja's back issue for the second Ashes Test, a pink-ball match at Brisbane and dismissed concerns that age is catching up with the southpaw, who will be 39 in December.
After finishing the Perth Ashes opener in two days, players and staff flew to their home cities. Khawaja's back spasms are a significant concern for the Aussies, as the 38-year-old was not able to open in both innings and failed to score well in his only attempt with the bat. He also dropped an easy catch at slips before leaving the field in England's second innings.
McDonald confirmed that the medical staff will be looking into the injury, considering Khawaja has never suffered a back spasm in his 14-year-long career.
"There were discussions around further investigation to whether it was more serious than what we sort of first anticipated," McDonald said on Monday as quoted by ESPNCricinfo.
"So we will work through that. We will get a squad together. We will step through everything we normally do. We get to camp in six days' time. It is a long way out, a lot of information to gather between now and then, and hopefully, Usman is fit and available for selection," he added.
Speaking further, McDonald said that his gut feel is that "it should be okay".
"But as I said, we will wait for that information to present," he added.
McDonald also dismissed concerns that this back spasm was a sign of age catching up with the southpaw. Khawaja had played 18 rounds of golf on three days leading upto the match, something he had done previously ahead of Test matches. But McDonald, just like Cricket Australia CEO Todd Greenberg, said that it had never caused any problems for him before.
"These things can happen," McDonald said. "And I do not think you can join the dots to something around his age. I think it is just one of those things that's happened," he added.
The Aussie head coach was asked if Head's explosive 83-ball 123, which helped hosts chase down 205 runs on day two itself, would lead to the team management thinking about changes in the top order, to which he said, "We have got a lot to consider".
"Batting orders are always debated heavily over a period of time. Middle-order players have not been the ones most popular to open the batting. So we will discuss and work through what it looks like."
"I think it gave us a little bit of a lens potentially to the future in terms of adjusting batting orders in the second innings, which is something that we have discussed. To be able to put different people in different positions with the scenario that was presented. So this one happened probably through a bit more chance, and obviously, the unfortunate injury to Usman. But I think it really probably opens up that discussion more than, more than anything else for us," he added.
The potential for flexibility in the case of the Head looks extremely appealing to the head coach, who said that the team has "sort of "hypothesised around a middle order player going up to the top order if the second innings happened to flatten out".
"In particular, if we needed quick runs, and the wicket was going to deteriorate. So in our strategy and our planning, we have tabled that from time to time," he said.
"We have had a conversation around Travis opening the batting for a long period of time, and Trav's has been on the record this week and previously around that also. I suppose, now that it is out there, yeah, happy to talk about it. Will we do it? If it presents at the right time, potentially," he concluded.