Khawaja happy to find ODI feet

Having "worked his backside off" to get an opportunity in Australia's limited-overs sides, Usman Khawaja hopes the days when he was pigeon-holed as a red-ball specialist are far behind him.

But the 29-year-old says despite his breakthrough patch of form over the past nine months, he's still taking a back seat on this Qantas Tour of the West Indies as he tries to establish himself as a key player in all forms of the game.

Khawaja, who will play just his 10th ODI when the Aussies take on South Africa in Barbados on Monday morning (AEST), returned to the 50-over side this year having barely played white-ball cricket for his country since his Test debut five-and-a-half years ago.

After revitalizing his Test career with four centuries last summer, the left-hander also thrived in Twenty20 cricket to seemingly break the perception that his fluent and orthodox style of play couldn't translate to the shorter formats.

He flourished with scores of 109no, 62, 104no and 70 in the Sydney Thunder's triumphant KFC Big Bash League campaign, which helped him earn a recall to the ODI side, while he was also Australia's leading run-scorer in the ICC World T20 in India.

Having posted his highest ODI score of 98 against the West Indies in St Kitts earlier this week, Khawaja will be an important player for the rest of this series in a side that has been shorn of experienced and prolific opener David Warner due to injury.

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But despite being captain of Queensland in domestic cricket and one of the senior players in a squad that has an average age of less than 27, Khawaja says he doesn't feel the responsibility to take on a leadership role in the group.

"Not at the moment. I still feel like I've just come into this one-day side," he said following Australia's first training session at Kensington Oval on Friday.

"At the moment I'm just trying to put my head down and do as well as I can.

"You always feel like a leader but when there's so many guys playing - (Steve Smith) has been there for a while and he's our captain, (George) Bailey's been there for a while - guys like that around, sometimes you just want to sit back and get a feel for things.

"That's where I sit right now and I'm just enjoying the experience at the moment and making sure I'm contributing where I can.

"All that stuff down the track will take care of itself if I'm still in the team."

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Regarded as a future star of Australian cricket from a young age, Khawaja has long battled with the notion that he's better suited to longer-form cricket than the shorter forms of the game.

Beginning from his early days with NSW, it's continued for most of his career even though he played a key role in Queensland's domestic one-day titles in 2012-13 and 2013 and was the leading run-scorer in the 2014 tournament.

Khawaja concedes that breaking into Australia's ODI side was never going to be an easy task in recent years as the side built towards their World Cup success on home soil last year.

But following the retirements of Michael Clarke and Shane Watson, Khawaja publically expressed his disappointment at missing out again for the 2015 series in England after he was one of the leading run-scorers during the preceding one-day series in India with the Australia A squad.

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He says the secret to finally forcing his way into the 50-over side is actually no secret at all - hard work.

"When I was younger I was always pigeon-holed as a four-day player," he said. "It frustrated me a lot.

"I just wanted to play for Australia in as many forms as I could and I've played for Australia in every single form now.

"I always had great ambitions to play one-day cricket for Australia and I knew T20 cricket was a little bit further away, probably seven years ago.

"I worked my backside off to get to where I am now.

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"A lot of people don't see what happens behind the scenes. They just see you starting to play well and doing things and they just think it just happened out of nowhere, but it never works that way.

"Unless you've actually seen other people do it or been through it yourself, you don't realise how much effort actually goes into getting from where you were five years ago to where you are now."