Benaud: A look at Symonds (Oct 95)

Title: A Symonds Tug-O`-War Author: Richie Benaud Source: Inside Edge (October 1995)

Richie Benaud dissects the Andrew Symonds debate...and England`s bid to steal a rising star.

There will be many other column inches written about Andrew Symonds between today and the time he plays for Queensland and possibly Australia, but I can`t really see what all the fuss is about.

England chose him to go on tour with their A tean to Pakistan, he was a player qualified to play for England and it was something they were perfectly entitled to do.

For his part, the player was entitled to say that he wanted to go, or as he did some months ago, that he wanted to play for Australia.

It would be a rather stupid selection committee and chairman of selectors who had seen a player qualified to play for England make 1700 first-class runs in an English summer, beat the hell out of opposing bowlers, break the record number of sixes hit in an innings and be nominated as Young Player of the Year and the ignore him!

If Raymond Illingworth had done that he would have deserved every bit of criticism that would have come his way.

The situation may be unfortunate for the 20-year-old Symonds, who looks from what I have seen of him on television, to be a good player.

But, it is only unfortunate because it interferes with Symonds` plans for his professional cricket career, which seen to be along the lines of playing County cricket with, say, Gloucestershire and international cricket with Australia.

He had already stated he wanted to play international cricket for Australia; that happened after he hit 108 for Queensland against England nine months ago.

This is an admirable ambition and many of us have held such ambitions over the years - some have managed it and others have fallen at the first, second or later hurdles.

It says much for Symonds` cricket ability that it was recognised by England; they have also recognised the talents of former Australian under-19 players like Martin McCague, Jason Gallian and Craig White.

It all revolves around the English qualification system which allows just one player in a County team to be unable to play for England. The counties then try to get around it by offering terms to Australians who were born in England and therefore do not come into the category of "official" overseas players.

Very belatedly, the Cricketers Association in England tried to sort out the problem in September after voting Symonds "Young Cricketer of the Year", but it is something that should have been done much earlier.

In Australia, a Sheffield Shield team can have an overseas player, or to be more accurate one who would not be available to play for Australia. But you won`t find two or three in a Sheffield Shield team who are able to play for other countries for the very good reason that this would not be to the benefit of Australian cricket.

I read the other day that Illingworth had been criticised for choosing Symonds and thereby forcing him to make a decision. None of the criticism came from me!

It needed someone as uncomplicated as "Illy" to sort it out and put a challenge on the table. Although Symonds and his family may feel they were hard done by, Illingworth, in fact, did the young player a favour.

So, too, did Mark Taylor when he was in London with the NSW team recently when the Symonds furore was at its height. Taylor, in a calm interview on the matter, refused to be flustered and pointed out that there are, at the moment in Australian cricket, many challengers for a few batting places.

There is no shortage of talent. If Symonds wanted to play for England he would wish him luck, if he wanted to play for Australia he knew what he had to do.

The easy way for Taylor there would have been to offer the interviewer even a hint of a headline by suggesting Australia would lose out if Symonds went to Pakistan. Taylor instead pursued a line for Symonds, which was a mixture of commonsense and inspiration... which, come to think of it, is the way he has been captaining his cricket teams.

Sheffield Shield cricket brings out the character of the participating players, it tests their character as well. It doesn`t provide a job, although it could be the stepping stone to greater things. It is, quite rightly, regarded as the best domestic first-class cricket competition in the world.

What Symonds needed to consider, and what in the end he did consider was a question: Could there be anything better than to try to make it into the Queensland team, the Sheffield Shield champions, and also the Australian side, skippered by Mark Taylor, currently rated as the best in the world?

What a marvellous challenge!

He has plenty of competition for places in both teams; if he`s good enough to do it, what a wonderful life it will be. If he`s not, then he`s lost absolutely nothing at all at 20 years of age!