• Former Australia all-rounder and two-time World Cup winner Andrew Symonds has died following a car accident in Queensland. He was 46. 

• He had played 238 matches, including 26 tests, for Australia between 1998-2009. He was a member of Australia’s World Cup-winning teams in 2003 and 2007 and appeared in 198 One-Day Internationals in addition to 14 T20 Internationals.

• Known for his swashbuckling batting and electric fielding, he could bowl both off-spin and medium pace.

• Symonds was born in Birmingham, England, on June 9, 1975. His family moved to Australia soon after, settling down in the rural northern Queensland town of Charters Towers.

• Symonds made his first class debut in 1994-95 before playing his first ODI in November 1998 against Pakistan in Lahore. He scored 5,088 runs, including six hundreds, in his ODI career. He also featured in 14 T20Is and averaged 48.14, besides playing in the IPL in the final stages of his career.

• He made his Test debut in March 2004 against Sri Lanka and scored 1,462 runs from 26 matches at an average of 40.61. He has 24 and 133 wickets in Test and ODI cricket respectively.

• Symonds, lovingly known as Roy, also had his share of controversies. His best innings of 162 not out came against India in the Sydney New Year Test of 2008, but it was overshadowed by the “Monkeygate” scandal that erupted later in that match. Symonds accused spinner Harbhajan Singh of calling him a “monkey” during the match. Singh, who denied any wrongdoing, was suspended for three matches, but the ban was overturned when India threatened to abandon the series.

• A disciplinary issue saw him being axed from Australia’s squad in England on the eve of the 2009 T20 World Cup, which ended his career with Cricket Australia cancelling his contract soon after.

• He retired from all forms of cricket in 2012.

• Cricket Australia has now lost three prominent figures in the past two months. Spin legend Shane Warne and former wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh had died in March.

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