Andrew Symonds says Chris Lynn is hurting his chances of playing for Australia by snubbing Queensland
Chris Lynn has missed selection in the Australian team for upcoming T20 internationals against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, former star Andrew Symonds says the devastating batsman isn’t helping his cause.
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Chris Lynn “made a rod for his own back” over his Twenty20 axing, with Australian white-ball king Andrew Symonds saying the batting sensation is his own worst enemy for snubbing the domestic scene.
After initially being disappointed by the communication silence from Trevor Hohns over his non-selection for the upcoming Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, Lynn has since smoked the peace pipe with the chief selector.
But his controversial stance to ignore the Sheffield Shield and domestic one-day competitions, which Hohns cited as a key reason why he had been overlooked, came in for fresh criticism from Symonds at the Fox Cricket launch on Thursday.
Symonds said he had reached out to Lynn on numerous occasions to convince the 29-year-old to return to the Shield, without luck.
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“Lynny’s made a rod for his own back there, because he’s not playing Shield cricket,” Symonds told the Daily Telegraph.
“I’ve spoken to him seriously about it a couple of times. He doesn’t want play it.
“It’s up to him. I’ve tried to help change his mind but he’s adamant that it’s not what he wants to do.”
Lynn last played first class cricket three summers ago, scoring 31 and 4 against Victoria in a rare appearance for Queensland, but Symonds argues that the format will drastically improve both his chances of an international recall and his overall game in general.
“The other thing is it is going to sharpen his senses because he’s going to be playing the best bowlers in domestic cricket,” Symonds added.
“That’s going to skill him up a lot better, in my opinion, than going all over the world and playing in these pulled-together Twenty20 competitions. You see some of them and the standard of cricket is not high.”
At his best Lynn is as devastating a striker of the ball as there is in the country, a quality which has allowed him to dominate the Big Bash like few others.
But that form hasn’t carried through to the international arena – making his T20 omission all the more understandable, according to Symonds.
“It’s not as if his international cricket over the last 12 months has made it so that he’s one of your first picked, has it?” Symonds said.
“There’s obviously disappointment that comes with being dropped, but I don’t think that’s being harsh.
“He’s a gamebreaker but he hasn’t broken enough games to really say he’s one of the first picked.”
Lynn, on Thursday, revealed he’d mended his relationship Hohns after telling the Daily Telegraph the chief selector’s reason for leaving him out of the upcoming T20 series was “a cop out”.
“I’ve spoken to Trevor Hohns since, we’re grown men and we’ve sorted it out,” Lynn told Macquarie Radio.
“We’ve just got to move forward, at the end of the day everyone’s going to be a little disappointed that you’re dropped and not picked in a series, that’s how life goes.”
Despite his frustrations over his non-selection and the radio silence which followed, Lynn remains eager to take part in next year’s T20 World Cup.
“He and (Marcus) Stoinis would be dying to play in that World Cup,” Symonds added.
“There’s plenty of incentive for those two to go back and play their best cricket.”
Originally published as Andrew Symonds says Chris Lynn is hurting his chances of playing for Australia by snubbing Queensland