By IANS,
Melbourne : Troubled Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds has been left out of the cricket tour of South Africa.
The decision was made after directors of Cricket Australia met today and discussed the all-rounder’s most recent fall from grace. Symonds recently labelled New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum a “lump of s..t” and was fined under the players code of behaviour agreement.
Cricket Australia (CA) has been consulting behind the scenes to establish if he was fit to tour again.
“Our assessment is that he is making good progress but his commitment needs testing against new, tougher criteria. We will finalise after consultation with his counsellors, the Australian Cricket Association and Queensland Cricket,” CA chief executive officer James Sutherland was quoted as saying in The Australian Tuesday.
“We have a responsibility to Andrew and his welfare, but we also have a responsibility to Australian cricket to ensure his commitment is as it needs to be before he can be considered for national selection,” he said.
Symonds was at a funeral in Queensland today and needed to be contacted, along with captain Ricky Ponting and a number of other people, before the decision was made public.
The same “player welfare” reasoning was used when he was sent home from the squad for repeated indiscretions last year.
Symonds was ordered by his employer then to seek counselling and has been seeing two separate counsellors to assist him with anger and alcohol issues.
He was allowed back into the side for this summer’s Test series but again ran into trouble when he appeared on radio slurring his words against McCullum.
CA will review his progress at the end of the Sheffield Shield competition, at which point a decision will be made as to whether Symonds can be considered for the ODI series against Pakistan in April.