For a few horrifying minutes, Australia found itself stuck inside its recurring nightmare. 

The clouds were heavy, the angry mob was baying for blood, and the tall blonde assassin with the white headband had that look in his eye.

It was early on day two at Edgbaston, and Stuart Broad was cooking.

In the space of two deliveries, Broad removed David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne and threatened to make the defining statement of this first Ashes Test.

But this wasn’t to be another Trent Bridge. Australia battled and scrapped and struggled to score, but this time it didn’t let a problem become a crisis.

For that, they largely have Usman Khawaja to thank.

Through a day in which Australia often failed to adhere to a coherent batting strategy, Khawaja’s unflinching self-confidence and crucial self-awareness steadied his team and kept them alive in the match.

The great hallmark of this late-career Khawaja renaissance has been his ability to entirely disregard external pressures and forces, and to simply be himself.

It’s so evident when he bats. Khawaja exists inside his own bubble, never getting sucked into the mini-battles or the mind games this England team is so effective at creating.

And on this day more than most, his team needed that calm head.

All around him, Bazball was happening. England’s fields were carefully tailored for individual batters, Ben Stokes laying his cards cleanly out on the table with total disregard for the traditional smoke and mirrors.

Seven bowlers were used on the day. One of them, inexplicably, was Harry Brook. It was the exact sort of controlled chaos England has made its stock and trade.

And at stages, it had Australia completely befuddled.

Just what Warner was thinking for his dismissal was anyone’s guess, his wild hack at a Broad wide one bringing an abrupt end to a relatively solid Australian start.

Labuschagne didn’t have time to overthink anything, falling immediate victim to Broad’s new mystery ball — the outswinger.

Steve Smith failed to find any fluency, the leg-side-dominant field stifling his most natural scoring shots. Eventually, Ben Stokes snuck one through, conclusively LBW on review despite Smith’s indignation.

Travis Head’s reflexive aggression marked a turning point in the day, but his innings always had the feeling of a summer fling. Moeen Ali beat his edge several times before lunch, and even as he was blasting his way to another Test 50 you sensed Head wasn’t in total control.

In the end, Ali and Stokes came out on top. It was a missed opportunity for Head and Australia, but at this stage both seem to have come to agree that you take the good with the bad from the dashing South Australian.

Cameron Green and Alex Carey proved fruitful partners for Khawaja, the former eventually undone by a peach of a Moeen Ali delivery and the latter eyeing a ton of his own when he resumes on day three at 52.

But all the while Khawaja played his own game, completely insulated from whatever fires threatened to break out at the other end.

If a quick dropped one short, he pulled it to the fence. If a spinner flighted one at just the right trajectory, he advanced and took him over the top. But if he didn’t fancy it, he simply defended or left it alone.

The only time Khawaja let emotion seep into his game was when his century was confirmed. Indeed, he may not have celebrated any of his 15 Test tons harder.

England really was the final frontier for Khawaja, the gaping hole in a Test résumé that is now complete. Usman Khawaja has done it all, conquered every battleground.

The traditionalists among us will have watched Khawaja bat with a sense of relief, that even as the ground under Test cricket continues to shift there is still room for a true opener’s innings. That has become Khawaja’s speciality, and it’s hard to imagine a day when it is not a valuable commodity.