(CNN) -- The turbulent cricket career of Andrew Symonds took
another twist on Thursday when the Australia all-rounder was sent home
from the World Twenty20 tournament in Britain for an "alcohol-related
incident".
Andrew Symonds will take no part in the World Twenty20 following his latest indiscretion.
The 33-year-old's international future is now in grave doubt following
the latest in a series of controversies, having only just returned to
the national squad after being suspended for missing a team meeting
last year. Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland
told a press conference in Melbourne that Symonds had broken a number
of rules "in the last 24 to 48 hours". "In isolation, the
breaches that I am talking about are not serious, but in the scheme of
things, in the scheme of history, they are enough for it to be the
final straw," Sutherland said, reported on the Cricinfo.com Web site. Symonds is contracted by Cricket Australia until June 30 this year, but
Sutherland's comments suggest it is unlikely he will be retained on the
international roster. Australia captain Ricky Ponting, a good
friend of Symonds and one of his staunchest supporters during the past
few years, said he was disappointed by the turn of events.Making a statement to the media about the incident on Thursday, Ponting
refused to go into details of what exactly had happened.
"Given the commitments he made, he's let himself down, let his
team-mates down and let down Cricket Australia," Ponting said. "He's
been given plenty of opportunities (to sort himself out), that's for
sure." Symonds had earlier this year been excluded from the
squad to face England in the upcoming Ashes series against England, the
nation of his birth. Symonds, who has a parent of West Indian
background, was involved in controversies in home and away series
against India in 2007 and 2008 where he was barracked racially by
crowds on the sub-continent and then allegedly called "a monkey" by
Harbhajan Singh in Sydney. He was suspended after missing a team
meeting in Darwin last year ahead of the series against Bangladesh in
order to go fishing, and was then cleared of wrongdoing after being
involved in a bar brawl with a supporter who wanted a photo of him.Further fears for Symonds' problems with alcohol were fueled after he
appeared to be intoxicated during a radio interview in which he
described New Zealand cricketer Brendon McCullum as a "lump of s**t"
and made inappropriate comments about the wife of Australia team-mate
Matthew Hayden. That cost him a place on the tour of South
Africa earlier this year, which allowed other younger players to stake
their claims for an Ashes berth. The Australians begin their World Twenty20 campaign against the West Indies on Saturday. Sutherland said CA would now seek to call a replacement player into their 15-man squad. "One would hope the ICC would look favourably on our application," Sutherland said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/06/04/cricket.symonds.australia/