Symonds and the Samson Factor

A respondent signing themselves “swaugh” has just taken me to task for declining to address events at the SCG and focusing instead on a pair of “apparent backstops”. (In the improbable case that it was really you, Steve, many humble apologies, but I am supposed to be a mere Pom commenting on primarily Pom-related matters.) What better way to start making diplomatic amends, then, than by hailing the godlike, even biblical feats of the man Indians currently love to hate even more than ICC umpires: Andrew Symonds.

In this morning’s Guardian, I read a report from Sydney by Reuters’ Julien Linden, detailing Harbhajan Singh’s punishment for calling Symonds “a monkey” and describing the latter as “the only black player in the Australian team”. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s the first time I’ve seen the greatest allrounder to hail from Birmingham depicted in such terms, in those express words. Andy Afford, the former England A spinner who edits the magazine All Out Cricket, swears he recalls once seeing Symonds labelled “half-aboriginal”, enough to rouse the ghost of Eddie Gilbert, but never “black”.

Whether or not Linden’s reference was a first, it cannot be said that Symonds is widely characterised by his pigmentation. Nor, more significantly, does his blackness appear to be being marketed as proof of a post-Howard, non-racial, all-inclusive national game. In which case, Cricket Australia has missed a trick.

Ever since Symonds decided to let his hair down a couple of years ago, trading in that menacing shaved head for those increasingly lavish, loud and proud dreadlocks, he has grown inexorably in stature. To attribute this to the confidence imbued by that breakthrough hundred against Pakistan at the 2003 World Cup in Johannesburg is probably correct but lacks depth.

No less an authority than Geoff Boycott proclaimed that, for all his one-day virtues – ferocious hitting, versatile bowling and superlative fielding – Symonds would never make a five-day cricketer. How wrong he was; how wrong so many of us were. Riddled with unwarranted luck as his SCG century was, that unconquered 162, followed by those three crucial wickets on Sunday, showed him beginning 2008 much as he had spent 2007: as the most adaptable, arguably most valuable, cog in the Australian machine. To fail to forge a link with that reclamation of hair and heritage seems irresponsible.

With the exception of the admirably militant Henry Olonga and some fellow Zimbabweans, Test cricket had not hitherto witnessed a tonsorial arrangement to compare with that sported by Symonds, who has never, to my knowledge, made any noteworthy public utterances about his colour.

Even when the West Indies were routing all and sundry, not even as politically-driven a figure as Viv Richards dared being mistaken for a Rastafarian; for a rebel. Afros were no less hip yet eminently acceptable – witness the bushy barnets of Garry Sobers, Larry Gomes and Ezra Moseley – but dreadlocks? No fear. Neither the West Indies board, still influenced by white administrators such as Steve Camacho and Peter Short, nor captain Clive Lloyd would have countenanced such an indelicately overt statement of black power.

This is only an educated, possibly prejudiced guess, but I suspect it takes inordinate courage to inhabit an Australian dressing-room in dreadlocks. In acquiring that degree of self-assurance - perhaps even regarding hirsuteness, and hence nature, as something he simply HAD to embrace if he was to discover the wherewithal to prove himself a worthy Test player, to fulfil himself - Symonds can be seen to have come to terms with his mixed and confusing origins.

I will not pretend to know exactly when the switch began, but suffice to say that it was the flamboyantly hirsute Symonds who leapt into fishing partner Matty Hayden’s arms in exultant celebration of that maiden Test century at the MCG two Decembers ago. Since the outset of that 156, nearly three times his previous best, he has ransacked 609 runs at 121.80. Now he has that budding beard, the possibilities may be limitless.

Throw nasty ol’ WG into the equation, mix in MS Dhoni’s precipitous decline since he lopped off his locks, and the message seems plain. When it comes to maximum, unfettered impact, Samson knew best.