Gone fishing go go go 2011:WHEN last the Ashes caravan pulled into this Yuletide siding, he was bigger than : Santa Claus. Smiting balls into the crowd, taking wickets and throwing them down. Emerging from a carwash wearing only a towel, muscles rippling, dreadlocks drooping, brushing his teeth and wearing a look that said: ''What? Isn't this how everyone takes a shower?''
''He was really the face of our marketing,'' Cricket Australia's Michael Brown says of Andrew Symonds. ''Everybody - male and female - thought he was a great ad for cricket.''
Adding context, Brown notes that it was some effort to cast a shadow over Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer. ''But he was up there punching at that weight.'' His endorsements included Ford, Solo, Asics, Skins and Gray-Nicolls.
Langer rates watching Symonds and Hayden rescue Australia from a wobbly 5-84 with a 279-run stand on day two of the Boxing Day Test among his most cherished cricket memories. ''When Symo scored his hundred, his first hundred in Test cricket, he was out in the middle of the MCG with however many people there … the two fishing buddies, the two best mates.
''And the way they celebrated … the way Haydos was so pleased for his great mate, it epitomised everything I believe in about Australian cricket. A couple of great mates, really happy for each other that they'd achieved something special together.''
Four years on, Langer returns to the MCG as Australia's batting coach, while Hayden's Boxing Day stomach churning will be down to not only nerves, but the occupational hazard of crewing on Sydney-to-Hobart fancy Loyal. Literally and metaphorically, Symonds is even further away from the cricket field he marauded over.
Two years after the last of his 26 Tests, and 18 months since he lost the battle to conform to the requirements of the 21st-century cricketer, Symonds is living in Townsville with plans to buy a property nearby in the country of his childhood, where he'll farm cattle, sugar cane, maybe some mangoes. His love of fishing endures; the Pacific Ocean horizon is all that fences him in.
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