Shane Warne obituary

Devastatingly inventive Australian leg-spin bowler widely regarded as
one of the best cricketers of all time

Matthew Engel

Fri 4 Mar 2022 19.04 GMT

Last modified on Fri 4 Mar 2022 19.10 GMT

Shane Warne, who has died aged 52 of a suspected heart attack, was
almost certainly the greatest spin bowler cricket has ever produced.
More than that, he was one of the most outsize personalities of any
sport. Everything he did in his game and his life was on a grand
scale: he lived fast and, it transpires, died young.

Warne singlehandedly revived the discipline of leg-spin, which by the
time he burst into Test cricket in the 1990s was almost a lost art. He
arrived into an Australia team that had already embarked on a run of
eight Ashes series wins and made it overwhelmingly stronger rCo he was
still in the business of terrorising Englishmen when he retired from
Test cricket 14 years later.

Spin bowlers in his era, certainly English ones, often found
themselves apologetic figures brought on to give a little breather to
the fast men, who had begun to dominate the sport, certainly outside
Asia. Warne was the reverse: he was not just a master of his craft; he commanded the arena.

He made that clear from the first ball he bowled in an Ashes Test, to
Mike Gatting at Old Trafford: rCLTwo-thirds of the way down the pitch
the ball dipped into the leg-side, opening Gatting up like a can of
beans, before ripping diagonally across his body to clip the outside
of off-stump,rCY wrote Mike Selvey in the Guardian. rCLGatting stood his ground, not in dissent or disappointment but in total, utter
disbelief.rCY

At the time some called it the Ball from Hell. As time went by it was sanctified as the Ball of the Century.

Warne was born and brought up in the Melbourne suburbs, the son of
Bridgette, who had come to Australia aged three, and Keith. He was not
remotely academic but at 15 he won a sports scholarship to Mentone
grammar school which, he concluded, licensed him not to be academic at
all. Cricket was not his obvious sport; at first, Australian Rules,
tennis and swimming might have been ahead of it.

Yet his special brilliance at cricket was connected with the
attributes needed for those three; he had extraordinary upper-body
strength: shoulders, arms and wrists. Warne himself thought this might
be connected with him breaking both legs when he was eight and having
to wheel himself round in a cart. Plus he had a natural gift at
spinning a cricket ball. At first he was seen as a batsman who bowled
a bit. But as he moved through the ranks at one of MelbournerCOs
top-grade clubs, St Kilda, bowling took over.
Warne celebrates after dismissing EnglandrCOs Andrew Flintoff on the
final day of the fifth Test at the Oval in 2005
Warne celebrates after dismissing EnglandrCOs Andrew Flintoff on the
final day of the fifth Test at the Oval in 2005. Photograph: Rui
Vieira/PA

Warne was always an Australian archetype rCo the lovable larrikin who
disobeys the rules but triumphs. He irritated teammates with his flash
cars (from teenage days) and dyed blond hair. He irritated by-the-book
coaches, notably at the Australian cricket academy, with his disdain
for their idea of fitness and discipline.

But he proved himself cricket-fit and was plunged into the Australia
team against India in January 1992, although he did nothing in that
match and was dropped. The following winter he bowled Australia to a
stunning victory over West Indies when he turned 143 for one to 219
all out. Then in New Zealand he took 17 wickets in three Tests, and
Martin Crowe, the opposing captain, called him the best leg-spinner in
the world.

When he came to England with Australia that spring, Warne worked away
early in the tour at Worcester while Graeme Hick hit him everywhere
except into the river and the cathedral. Overhyped, it was said. With hindsight, that day must be seen as part of the masterplan. There were
no unbelievers after the Gatting ball.

Unlike the previous leg-spin standard-bearer, the Pakistani player
Abdul Qadir, Warne did not use the googly as his major weapon. He
quickly became a master of the flipper, which also turned the presumed
wrong way, but with the help of backspin. He mastered many other
variants, some of which may have existed only in opponentsrCO heads. rCLIf
the batsman thinks itrCOs spinning,rCY as one old-timer put it, rCLitrCOs spinning.rCY

He was also a master of performance art, facial expressions,
unexpected stops and starts, never letting the batsman settle. And,
when all else failed, good old Australian sledging.

The wickets and landmarks kept coming, but so did the scrapes. It was
belatedly revealed that he had been involved in the first
manifestation of cricketrCOs problems with match-fixing when he had
taken money for giving information about pitches and weather to a Sri
Lankan bookmaker. It was at the bottom end of the scale of potential
illegality but caused great reputational damage at the time.
Warne acknowledges the acclaim of the crowd after playing in his
penultimate Test match, on his home ground in Melbourne in December
2006.

More scrapes followed, above all the use of a banned diuretic, for
which he was banished for a year and which he rather ungallantly
appeared to blame on his mother. Thus Warne never did become Australia
captain, at which he might well have excelled. But his Test career
ended in a blaze of glory when Australia avenged EnglandrCOs
nation-stopping theatrical Ashes victory of 2005 by crushing England
5-0. In his 144th and penultimate Test, he took his 700th Test wicket.

Warne also broke the mould by proving spin bowlers could succeed in
one-day cricket. He captained Rajasthan Royals to the first Indian
Premier League title in 2008 and proved an effective and popular
captain and coach in England with Hampshire. He enjoyed his celebrity
and all that it brought him. There was a brief, highly publicised
relationship with Liz Hurley.

He remained a handsome, charismatic, fun-loving figure who did not
slow down. Behind it all, he was charming and at heart a true son of
the game. He was named one of the five cricketers of the 20th century
by Wisden in 2000 and was both gracious and chuffed to bits. Everyone
in cricket will be devastated that the carnival is over.

He is survived by three children, Jackson, Summer and Brooke, from his
1995 marriage to Simone Callahan, which ended in divorce in 2005.

Shane Warne, cricketer, born 13 September 1969; died 4 March 2022

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/04/shane-warne-obituary
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* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)