Khawaja was adamant that Labuschagne should remain at No.3 given his success in that role and said he was wary of messing around with the order too much given the difficulty of opening the batting.

"Have you asked Marnus this? I think he would give you a really clear, 'hell no'," Khawaja said. "Marnus has got opening-itis. I am pretty sure Davey Warner hurt his arm and sent Alex Carey out to open. I think that is a long shot.

"Opening is not easy. It's tough work. I can tell you that because I've batted at [No.]1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for Australia. I'm telling you by far opening is the hardest and it's very hard to bring someone who hasn't opened.

"I'm positive if you put Marnus up there at opening he would do very well. But would he do as well opening as he does at No.3? I'm not sure.

"I wouldn't want to take the risk [given he's] averaging 55 [56.81] at three and Steve Smith averages 60 [58.61] in general. So you wouldn't want to mess around with it too much.

"Opening can be a very, very tough thing to do mentally more than physically so I'm always a bit shy of not letting people who haven't opened much in the past open the batting."

"He's done so well at No.5," Khawaja said. "There's no point in shifting around people. We have so many openers to pick from. I don't see any point shifting around players for the sake of it. I think people are talking about that because of Mitch Marsh and Cameron Green. But I think they're both going for the same spot. So decide who the better player is for that game at that time and then you worry about the rest of the team."

He said he does have an opinion on which player is the best of the three but he would not divulge it and he has not been asked to provide a preferred future partner to the Australian selectors.

"It wouldn't matter anyway even if they asked me. I'd tell them to pick whoever you think is the best," Khawaja said.

"I'm not willing to talk about it, to be honest. I think so many things go into it. I'm not privy to watching all these guys and all their batting. To be honest, even if I did think one was better than the other it's so minuscule that it probably doesn't matter. I think all three of the guys that are in contention to open the batting deserve it. For me, it's quite easy to just sit back and say pick whoever you want."