Symonds staying home

When his team-mates in the Australian cricket team head off to South Africa in a couple of weeks for the return series against the Proteas, Andrew "Roy" Symonds won't be with them.

Cricinfo reports that the Australian Cricket Board has decided that Symonds will instead undergo further psychological counselling after a series of alcohol-related incidents in the last few months.

However Keeping Stock suspects that there is a slighly different reason for leaving Symonds at home. We reckon that the entire Australian team is going to be in need of intensive psychological counselling by the time it has finished its tour, and likely as not, lost a third test series in a short space of time. We reckon that Symonds is being used as a crash-test dummy, to see if his counsellors are up to the task, which promises to be a big one. Well, that's our story, and we're sticking to it!