Andrew Symonds

Andrew Symonds (9 June 1975 – 14 May 2022) was an Australian international cricketer, who played all three formats as a batting all-rounder.

Commonly nicknamed "Roy", he was a key member of two World Cup–winning squads.

In 1988, Symonds' father accepted a deputy headmaster role at All Saints Anglican School, and the family subsequently relocated to the Gold Coast when Symonds was 12 years of age.

He attended the school and continued his junior cricket at Palm Beach Currumbin.

A few years later, Symonds made his Queensland Premier Cricket debut for the Gold Coast Dolphins as a 15-year-old and hit a remarkable double century in his first game.

Symonds was an aggressive right-handed batsman who could also bowl off spin or medium pace, making him a solid all-rounder.

He was an AIS Australian Cricket Academy scholarship holder in 1994.

In 1995, after playing in his first season for English county Gloucestershire, Symonds won the Cricket Writer's Club Young Cricketer of the Year award.

Shortly afterwards, Symonds was selected as part of the England A team that was to tour Pakistan in the winter; however, he decided not to go, instead choosing to pursue an international career for Australia.

His place on the tour was later taken by Middlesex player Jason Pooley.

Symonds scored more than 5,000 runs and took more than 100 wickets for the Queensland state team.

Initially, he was considered an England-qualified player; however, following his first season of county cricket in 1995, he declared that his allegiances lay with Australia when he chose not to tour Pakistan with the England A team.

In August 1995, he hit a record 16 sixes in his unbeaten 254 against Glamorgan at Abergavenny.

In doing so, he beat the previous mark set by New Zealand's John R. Reid.

He scored 113 and took four wickets in a losing cause in the final of the 1998–99 Sheffield Shield season, and was named man of the match in the 2002 Pura Cup final after scoring 123 runs and taking six wickets.

Symonds played for four English counties during his career—Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire and Surrey.

His first appearance for an English county was with Gloucestershire.

Symonds was a part of the team that won both the 2003 Cricket World Cup and, four years later, the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

Symonds played as a right-handed, middle-order batsman and alternated between medium pace and off-spin bowling.

He was also notable for his exceptional fielding skills.

He was an exceptional fielder, with a report prepared by ESPNcricinfo in late 2005 showing that since the 1999 Cricket World Cup, he had effected the equal-fifth-most run-outs in One Day International (ODI) cricket of any fieldsman, with the fourth-highest success rate, with Ricky Ponting rating him the best fielder he had seen, and a better and more versatile one than Herschelle Gibbs and Jonty Rhodes because Symonds was taller than them, giving him better defensive coverage range and had greater throw power outside the circle.

He was very agile for his size and weight (medium-heavy build; 187 cm tall), had excellent reflexes, was able to take catches well and had a powerful and accurate throwing arm.

His nickname was Roy, shortened from the name Leroy, after a coach from early in his career believed he resembled local Brisbane basketball player Leroy Loggins.

After mid-2008, Symonds spent significant time out of the team due to disciplinary reasons, including alcohol abuse.

His sister, Louise Symonds, who was also adopted, was a contestant on the Australian Gladiators television series in 2008.

He spent the early part of his childhood in Charters Towers, northern Queensland, where his father taught at the private All Souls St Gabriels School, which Symonds attended.

He showed sporting prowess from a very early age.

"Dad was cricket mad," Symonds said.

"He’d throw balls to me five or six days a week, before school, after school. And we’d play all sorts of games inside the house with ping-pong balls and Christmas decorations."

His early junior cricket was played in Townsville for the Wanderers club, with the father-and-son duo making the 270-kilometre return trip sometimes twice a week.

In June 2009, he was sent home from the 2009 World Twenty20, his third suspension, expulsion or exclusion from selection in the space of a year.

His central contract was then withdrawn, and many cricket analysts speculated that the Australian administrators would no longer tolerate him and that Symonds might announce his retirement.

The record was equalled by Graham Napier for Essex against Surrey in 2011, and stood until May 2022 when Ben Stokes hit 17 sixes in an innings for Durham against Worcestershire.

Symonds eventually retired from all forms of professional cricket in February 2012, to concentrate on his family life.

In 2022, Symonds died in a single-vehicle car crash at Hervey Range, outside Townsville, Queensland.

He was 46.

One of Symonds' birth parents was of an Afro-Caribbean background, while the other was believed to be of Scandinavian descent.

Symonds was adopted by parents Ken and Barbara at three months of age, and they moved to Australia when he was a toddler.

He had three siblings.

Wisden reported that the 16th six "landed on a tennis court about 20 ft over the boundary" and "though he was undoubtedly helped by the short boundaries, it would have been a hugely effective innings on any ground in the world".