KEY POINTS:
ADELAIDE - A recalled Andrew Symonds would be an "enormous distraction" to an Australian team with enough cricket-based problems already, according to former test captain Ian Chappell.
On the day Symonds was charged under Cricket Australia's code of conduct for making a detrimental public comment - his "lump of s***" jibe at Kiwi `keeper Brendon McCullum - Chappell said he did not think the Queenslander had yet come to terms with a drinking problem.
He also felt that Symonds' behaviour effectively reduced his value to any team, including Australia and even his IPL franchise, because of the distraction and irritation it created for teammates.
"It's fine for Ricky Ponting to be saying he'll take Andrew Symonds back, but in the shape he's in at the moment he's going to be a hell of a distraction to the team," Chappell said.
"They've got enough distractions with players struggling for form, without outside distractions.
"You've got to face up to the fact you've got a problem before you can fix it.
"I don't know what's been going on with the counselling, but it appears to me, I certainly haven't heard anything public from Andrew saying, `look I have a bit of a problem here'.
"He keeps putting himself in the position like he did in the pub in Brisbane, and then in that position the other day when he's interviewed when he's had a few drinks, it sounds to me that he hasn't made that admission even to himself that he's got a problem."
Chappell offered Ponting as an example of a sportsman who had successfully dealt with a drinking problem, and done so by starting with a public admission of his frailty.
"There were a lot of people who said they thought Ricky Ponting was silly to make his announcement public a few years ago when he said `I've got a drinking problem'," Chappell said.
"But I thought one, it was a pretty courageous thing to do, and two, I thought it was quite a smart thing to do, because he put the onus on himself.
"If he didn't fix the problem there were going to be a few million people who knew that he hadn't fixed the problem."
Looking over Symonds' list of misadventures since he first ran into trouble by missing a team meeting to go fishing in Darwin during the off-season, Chappell viewed them as "cries for help".
"You almost get the feeling that these are cries for help, there's been so many of them lately, as an ex-sportsman you think, well is he almost trying to get himself into trouble so someone else does the job for him and it puts him out of the game for a while," he said.
- AAP
