Photograph: Chris Young/PAPhotograph: Chris Young/PAo a generation of 21st-century cricket fans, Andrew Symonds was a real-life action hero. He had Superman’s physique, Batman’s mystery, The Hulk’s power and The Flash’s agility. Little wonder cricket-mad kids worshipped him across three decades. With a few swings of his bat, an over of crafty medium pace or off-spin, or a spectacular leap, dive and throw in the field, Symonds could turn a game on its head.
Symonds celebrates with Australian teammates after catching out England’s Kevin Pietersen during the first day of the fourth Ashes Test at the MCG in 2006.If Shane Warne was Australian cricket’s most brilliant larrikin, Symonds was its wildest colonial boy, more at ease mud-crabbing or deep sea-fishing than playing organised cricket with its traditions, rites and passages and pressure tests.
A Test debut came the next summer but at first he looked ill at ease in white. There was none of the swagger he carried into the short-form game, where canny captains like Ricky Ponting knew not to assign him a role but merely turn him loose. Symonds struggled on that first Sri Lankan tour in 2003-04 then underachieved against the West Indies. His frustration showed in some loose off-field behaviour. It was a pattern that repeated throughout his career and it cost him Test caps – but never fans.
For the fourth estate, he was manna – enigmatic, untameable and unaffected. As a young cricket editor, I waited three days for an interview with Symonds only to get a better headline when he and fellow Queensland outdoorsman Matthew Hayden were rescued from shark-infested seas after their fishing boat sank and left them clinging to an Esky lid.