Andrew Symonds‘ former teammate Matthew Mott has revealed how close the cricket legend came to representing England, saying his decision to play for Australia came “down to his moral compass”.
Born in Birmingham in 1975, Symonds was adopted by two English teachers, Barbara and Ken, before the family migrated to Australia when he was a toddler.
As Symonds rose through the ranks in Australia throughout the early 1990s, the immensely talented Queenslander was on the radar of England, who desperately attempted to convince him to return home.
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The only problem? Symonds considered Australia to be his home by the time his cricket career was getting underway.
Symonds made his county cricket debut with Gloucestershire in 1995 and was named Cricket Writers’ Club Young Cricketer of the Year after a stunning first season, an award won by English cricket icons such as Ian Botham, Nasser Hussain, Andrew Flintoff, Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Stuart Broad.
The all-rounder’s exceptional debut season resulted in him being selected in an England A squad to tour Pakistan, but Symonds rejected the offer, instead persisting with his dream of representing Australia.
According to Mott, Symonds could very well have been lost to Australia if he wasn’t as committed to his dream.
“He was born in Birmingham, so there was definitely a tie there. Barbara and Ken are very proud English people,” Mott said.
“For me, it got down to his moral compass, and he wanted to play for Australia, he was desperate to play for Australia. He loved Australia, he loved the bush, he loved everything about Australia.
“For him, it was never a monetary thing. There was a lot of money thrown at him, but for him it was more about that journey of trying to fulfill his childhood dreams, and nothing was going to get in the way of that.
“A lot of people would’ve gone the other way at that stage because it was very enticing. He basically had it there on a platter. He was actually well down the pecking order in Australia at that stage, he was struggling in first-class cricket more or less, so it was a big call to make, but that summed him up as a person.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Symonds wound up having a tremendous career in all three formats of the game for Australia, amassing 6887 international runs in 238 international appearances.