Former Aussie all-rounder Andrew Symonds feels that he is ready for the coaching job. Symonds believes he has enough knowledge to take up the challenge. He played most of the place in cricket world. He further stated that he has enough knowledge to teach the youngsters of the game and learn from him.
Symonds was asked how his game changed after a see-saw ride in the first five years in international cricket. He said, “Ricky Ponting was instrumental in my career going forward. I suppose the 2003 World Cup was probably where it was most obvious that he wanted me on that tour. I had not really scored a lot of runs to have warranted a spot on that tour, but he had a gut feeling that I was going to come good. Fortunately, on that tour we had Michael Bevan injured and Darren Lehmann out suspended so I had to play and I had some success and from that point on, I sort of worked out how to be a successful international batsman.”
ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 victory was special for Andrew Symonds. From then Australia had gone through a lot in the run up to the mega event. He said, “I have never seen a more nervous Australian dressing room. It was so quiet and you could see everyone was so nervous. We were missing key players and this was the reason for the tensed atmosphere in the dressing room. Other teams could sniff that we were possibly going to have some weak areas and that this might be the weakest Australian side that they’ve seen for a while and they might have an opportunity to knock us off. In came players like Andy Bichel, Brad Hogg and that was when I sort of started to work things out a bit better. We went through that whole World Cup undefeated.”
On being asked about his approach to the game as an all-rounder, the former cricketer said, “The idea of batting is to score runs. But for me, it was about trying to find the right balance – not to be over-aggressive and reckless but be aggressive enough to be able to put enough pressure on the opposition. For me, it was finding that balance. I train pretty hard. Once I worked out that I was going to bowl a fair bit and wanted to be dynamic in the field, then having to bat, I got to a point in my career where I was incredibly fit and strong, so I could handle the workload and the rigours of doing those three things.”