About a Roy

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Andrew Symonds has headed off to Sri Lanka safe in the knowledge that he has just completed his most prolific 12 months in Australian colours. His devestating performance last Sunday in smashing the previously dominant Indian bowlers for 66 runs off just 39 balls in the 2nd VB Final capped off a stunning period in his career which saw him go from lucky tourist, to the world’s most damaging middle-order batsmen.

A year ago, the man they call ‘Roy’ (alluding to his apparent similarity as a teenager to Brisbane Bullets basketballing legend Leroy Loggins) was destined for the cricketing wilderness after scoring a paltry 12 runs at an average of just 4 from his 5 appearances in the VB Series against England and Sri Lanka. Given that he was seen primarily as an all-rounder, his sole wicket at 82 did not help his claims for a berth in the World Cup squad due to leave for South Africa.

Yet somehow, the selectors justified including him in the 15 man touring party – ahead of the likes of Ian Harvey (who joined in only after Shane Watson was injured) and Michael Clarke – officially being thrown the lifeline that would see the biggest turnaround in a cricket career since Stephen Waugh’s watershed 1989 tour to England.

‘Yeah, it was a complete surprise to be selected for the World Cup,’ he told me over a scratchy telephone line a day before the Allan Border Medal night of nights. ‘I didn’t expect for a single minute that I’d be picked.’

The Monday’s experts around the country were just as surprised, finding nothing to support the selectors’ faith in a man who was undoubtably one of the world’s finest fielders, yet was seemingly incapable of effectively wielding a piece of willow that had been his weapon of destruction at domestic level for so long.

But, as history tells us, the selectors’ faith was immediately repaid. Once a severe groin injury to Michael Bevan and a suspension to Darren Lehmann gave Andrew Symonds a berth in the first World Cup game of 2003, he suddenly found himself at the crease with his country struggling at 4 for not-too-many. Despite frequently playing and missing at the early thunderbolts being flung down at him from Waqar, Shoaib and Wasim, he was somehow able to survive the onslaught, and went on to grasp what surely must have been his last opportunity at international level.

What followed that initial 5 over scratch-around was the innings of the tournament, highlighted by flawless, contemptuous strokeplay, and mature run accumulation. The image of Symonds bouncing back off the deck and striding down the pitch after a Waqar beamer sent him ducking for cover was the first clear sign that Andrew Symonds was no longer the intimidated, but the intimidator.

He had arrived, and he’d waited until the last precious moment of his flagging career on world cricket’s biggest stage to announce it.

‘Things just started going my way,’ he says of the magnificent 143 not out which set Australia on its course for victory against Pakistan. ‘People seem to think that you have to talk to yourself to get yourself going, but it’s more just concentrating on the next ball that’s coming down at you and doing the best you can with that ball.’

Since the beginning of the World Cup, Andrew Symonds, World Beater has hit 1071 runs from 28 innings at an average of 48.68. Solid enough figures on their own, but when you stand them next to some of his fellow teammates, they seem to glow in the dark.

Adam Gilchrist (32 innings, 1463 at 45.72), Ricky Ponting (35 innings, 1317 at 43.9), and Matthew Hayden (34 innings, 1170 runs at 37.74) are regarded as three of the best batsmen of our generation. Andrew Symonds has outstripped all of them in the average department, and only Adam Gilchrist would be out of reach in the aggregates had Symonds experienced the same number of visits to the crease as his top order comrades. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Symonds is in elite company.

It took Symonds nearly a decade to finally produce the type of match-winning form the Australian public has always known he’s been capable of. We all know of the world record 16 sixes he smashed in one innings whilst playing for Gloucestershire back in 1995, and it was form like this that prompted the English Cricket Board to approach Symonds to play for an England ‘A’ side that same year.

Having been born in Birmingham before moving to Australia at the age of two, Symonds was eligible to play for the ‘mother country’. But according to the man himself, it wasn’t even an issue.

‘I’d been brought up in Australia, and played all my cricket here. I never even considered it. I’ve always been Australian, and that was that.’ Music to the ears of the patriotic Australian.

Three years later, Symonds was heading to the sub-continent with the Australian one day side. He blossomed early, compiling 157 runs from 5 digs at 52.33. But from there, his average proceeded to plummet through the coming seasons.

Such was his failure to fulfill this initial promise that his second ODI score of 68 not out remained his highest score until that epic 143 not out against Pakistan in the World Cup opener. Before beating Shoaib and co into submission, his career average had taken a dive to an all-time low of 23.81.

He has refused to look back since, playing a vital role with bat and ball in helping his country retain the World Cup they won in England back in 1999, and continuing that form through the West Indies, India, and back at home this summer. He revelled in the South African conditions, showing a cool head at times of crisis, a trait that has become characteristic of his batting ever since.

On one of the few days off the players were granted during the World Cup, Symonds went hunting with Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee. Symonds has always found that hunting is a good form of relaxation, especially at the end of a long season.

‘Oh definitely. Absolutely. I try to get out there as often as I can. Back home, we usually just go out with the dogs, but we were able to take some guns out in South Africa, so it was a little bit different. Pidge (McGrath) does a fair bit back home, so he’s a pretty good shot. Binger (Lee) was new to it though, so he was a bit… exciteable, I suppose. He wanted to shoot everything.’

At only 28, Symonds is one of the youngest-yet-experienced of the current crop of Australian players. With whispers abound that he could be a surprise inclusion for the Test side in coming tours, the powers that be could be looking to him to help guide Australia through the turbulent post-Waugh period, as well as to a landmark three-peat in the West Indies in 2007.

But as they say, ‘potential is nothing, performance is everything.’ Only time will tell if Symonds will continue to perform to his potential. In the meantime, all we can do is sit back and enjoy the show.