Team won’t miss Symonds and neither should cricket fans

You hypocrite. Cast your mind back to the World Cup in South Africa in 2003. The one where Ricky Ponting had begged for your inclusion because he could see the good in you.
The one where Shane Warne returned a positive drugs test the morning of the first match against Pakistan. The scandal that left you storming around The Sandton Sun Hotel in Johannesburg in anger and confusion.
The one where, after you’d scored a century against Pakistan, you sat behind a microphone and scolded Warne for having let you down. The one where you sat next to Ponting there and nodded your head when the Australian skipper described Warne as naive and stupid.
You were furious with Warne back then, unable to sleep. How could he have done this to the team?
You were enraged by the whole saga, what it was doing to the squad, the way it threatened to distract. All you wanted to do was play cricket without off-field dramas getting in the way.
“I didn’t know how I felt about Warnie the night he explained to us what had happened,” you said back then. “I was quite wild in my room that night. I didn’t know whether I was angry with him or angry at others for going so hard at him.”
Either way, Warne had let you down.
Don’t waste your breath chastising Symonds. This needs to be made clear – he does not give a stuff what you think about him.
He’s told countless people exactly that in bar-room discussions when his rudeness to the average punter has been breathtaking.
But he does care about the opinions of his teammates. That was his one saving grace. The world could be against him, but those in the dressing room were with him and that was enough for him.
That’s gone now. He’s received plenty of loyalty, from Ponting, Cricket Australia, everyone, but given little in return. When he got on the drink in England this week, he was slapping the face of all those who’d asked him not to imbibe.
There’s a tragic side to all this. It’s John Daly-esque. The talented sportsman with the self-destructive streak. Symonds has been angry for years, bailing up journalists in the bathrooms of hotels, pushing them around and telling them they’re not worth a pinch of the proverbial.
Fobbing off fans wanting nothing more than an autograph. He’s been given five-star hotels, enormous pay cheques, a privileged life – and all he’s done is whinge about all the commitments that go with it. If he didn’t like it, he should have just quit.
Perhaps this is the next-best thing. Perhaps, consciously or subconsciously, he wants to be sacked.
It was previously unfathomable that Ponting would lose faith in Symonds. As recently as last month he was still talking him up. But an exasperated Ponting has been clear on this occasion: Symonds won’t be missed in England for the same reason that Warne wasn’t missed when Australia won the 2003 World Cup.
At the end of that tournament, back at the Sandton Sun, less than 100 metres from the function room where Warne’s fall from grace had been announced, Australian players were quietly reflecting on their triumph over a couple of cold beers.
It had been a seamless tour from the moment Warne departed and a couple of outspoken players described their trek around Africa as the best cricketing trip of their lives.
Why? Because they’d been spared the off-field dramas generated by Warne. One of those players was Symonds.

Original Article on smh.com.au