Shane Warne's staggering gesture for Andrew Symonds comes to light
Aussie cricket great Adam Gilchrist has revealed an incredible gesture from Shane Warne to Andrew Symonds after the tragic deaths of both men in recent months.
The Aussie cricket community is in mourning once again after Symonds was killed in a car accident in far north Queensland on Saturday night.
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The devastating news comes just months after Warne died of a heart attack in Thailand in March.
Symonds was just 46, while Warne was 52.
Speaking on Triple M radio on Tuesday afternoon, Gilchrist spoke fondly about both of his former teammates and revealed Warne's incredible gesture for Symonds.
Gilchrist said Warne invited Symonds to be one of his assistants coaches at the London Spirit for The Hundred T20 competition in England.
But what Symonds didn't know until recently was that Warne had planned to pay his former teammate and good friend out of his own pocket for the gig.
“A little thing that Roy was telling me just last week - Warnie had been speaking about getting him over to be an assistant coach at the London Spirit in The Hundred competition over there in England," Gilchrist said.
“And it was only a couple of weeks ago that Roy found out there was no budget put aside for him. There was nothing documented in London Spirit’s set-up.
“Warnie was doing that on his own accord and was going to pay Roy the wage that he was going to get for being over there and Roy couldn’t believe that.
“That sense of friendship and mateship was everything that Roy built his whole life around, of trust and loyalty.
“Here we are a few days later after him relaying that story to me, he’s disappeared. He was loyal to a fault, he really was.”
Gilchrist summed up the tributes that have been flooding in for Symonds in the wake of his tragic death.
“I spent yesterday talking with mates, doing a few interviews, reflecting - and very rarely did it come back to his sporting prowess," the wicket-keeping great said.
“It was just about him and his warmth and his humility and he just cared for everyone else.
“Geez he made you laugh. He was just an absolute crackerjack, naturally funny bloke where he didn’t even know he was doing it half the time.”
Andrew Symonds' close bond with Shane Warne
In a heartbreaking twist, Symonds' final social media post ended up being about Warne after his death.
The Queenslander posted a number of photos of himself and Warne in March, writing: "Devastated, I’m hoping this is all a bad dream.
"I just can’t get my head around never seeing you again.
"Love to all the Warne family. I’m speechless."
Symonds was in attendance at Warne's state memorial service at the MCG, farewelling his great mate along with the rest of the cricket world.
“My friendship with Shane just grew and grew over the years and he was so generous to me. I’ve been through some difficult periods and I’d ring him and if he didn’t take the call he’d ring me straight back," Symonds said after Warne's death.
“I’ve done quite a bit of (commentary) work with him over the last three years and just recently he rang me – probably 10 days (before he died) and I was at home and I was getting ready to go fishing actually. And he said, ‘I’ve got some good news for you, Roy.
“‘Remember how we talked about this coaching thing for the London Spirit?’ He said, ‘I’ve got you the job’.
“And I was really looking forward to going to coach with Shane Warne. No.1 to see how he went about it and then obviously to learn.
“He said, ‘Do you want to dip your toe into the water with coaching? You seem to really know the game quite well and you describe things to me quite well so would you like to give it a go?’
“So off the back of that that, that opportunity arose and unfortunately I won’t get to live that with him.”
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