Andrew Symonds was a born entertainer and a reluctant celebrity

To a generation of 21st-century cricket fans, Andrew Symonds was a real-life action hero. He had Superman’s physique, Batman’s mystery, The Hulk’s power and The Flash’s agility. Little wonder cricket-mad kids worshipped him across three decades. With a few swings of his bat, an over of crafty medium pace or off-spin, or a spectacular leap, dive and throw in the field, Symonds could turn a game on its head.

He was a gifted athlete, a born entertainer and a reluctant celebrity. Most of all, a true allrounder, on and off the field. The news of his death is tragic. He leaves behind a wife, two children and a legacy of greatness.

Symonds was born in Birmingham in 1975, two days after the first Cricket World Cup kicked off in London. His parentage was a mix of Afro-Caribbean and Swedish or Danish blood. Although he was adopted at 12 weeks old by school teachers Ken and Barbara Symonds, and emigrated to Australia soon after, his instinctive brilliance as a junior cricketer fed a mythology which passed from town to town, over rivers and down coastlines about the big boy wonder whose father drove him 270km twice a week to bat and bowl the house down for the Townsville Wanderers, a club whose bucolic home ground was 50km from where Symonds’s rolled car was found by police in the wilds of Hervey Ranges, west of town.

Although he made his first-grade debut in 1994-95, scoring more than 5,000 runs and taking more than 100 wickets, Symonds came of age in his UK birthplace, bludgeoning his name into county cricket infamy with several rousing innings including a famous 254 against Glamorgan in 1995 that included 16 sixes (and just as many pints afterwards). Such feats of power and instinct saw England rattle his cage to claim his Pommy