A Shane Warne Special
Shane Warne was many things to many millions of people around the entire world and if you haven’t seen the recent documentary on his life entitled simply “Shane” or read his 2018 “No Spin” autobiography or indeed seen and heard him in recent and now so sadly prescient interviews, you won’t be aware that the same SK Warne, cricketing history maker and one of the very, very few to have transcended his own sport, rather enjoyed a quiet and peaceful life away from the sporting superhero status he’d rightly achieved.
Shane Keith Warne was rather different from the SK Warne that thrived on the “white line fever” of both sporting contest and the acclaim the “King of Spin” received. Throughout his book in particular he repeatedly paints the picture of a man who whilst loving nearly (nearly) every minute as he ripped up the record books on his way to 708 Test Match wickets and second all time in the entire history of the game (Shane was also voted 4th in Wisden’s 5 Cricketers of the Century), he was also greatly misunderstood: he was a quiet and peaceful man, and a world away from the cricketing genius he so clearly was. But as he was so candid in affirming, and especially so since the release of his autobiography, he’d also broken the hearts of his family, been publicly reckless as well as publicly in love with one of the world’s most beautiful ladies and so keen for everyone to be aware of his desperate attempts at redemption (except for his spat with ex Australian Captain Steve Waugh!) in all of these areas as well as peace and solace and from what I personally gleaned, a very public attempt at an admission of guilt, wrongdoing, temptation and more than a little sorrow. Not quite the picture painted of the blonde haired football obsessive (note: not cricket, not yet) who butted heads with the Establishment of Cricket Australia, and won, garnering a World Cup, multiple Ashes triumphs, an IPL Championship and millions of fans worldwide in the wake of his otherworldly leg spinning deliveries.
Shane was an avowed fan of Australian Rules Football and dreamed of playing professionally for the team he represented at Under 19 level, St Kilda, and cricket was a sport and a skill very much in background until he represented his state of Victoria and at their famed and majestic home ground of the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) or simply and locally known as “The G”. He was catapulted into the Australian Test Match team aged 21 and a year or so later bowled his first ball in Ashes cricket against the old cricketing foe of England on a cold and overcast Manchester day. This first ball from a relatively unknown quantity, with bleached blonde hair and a dab of white sunscreen upon his nose would become known then, and forever more, as the “Ball of the Century” and a legend was born. The ball itself will be remembered for as long as the game of cricket is played, for it spun well outside Mike Gatting’s leg stump and in Shane’s own words “fizzed” back across a perfectly straight forward defensive shot but which defeated it so damn perfectly by crashing into the England batsman’s off stump. It’s the perfect “leggie” or leg spin delivery and SK Warne delivered it with his very first ball in Ashes Test cricket.
This isn’t written as an autobiographical account of Shane Warne’s life and nor is at an obituary. Despite the man in question ruining many a late night or early morning as I watched Ashes cricket from Australia with him destroying an England batting order alongside his mate Glenn “Pidgeon” McGrath, I adored Warney, and towards the end of his playing career I absolutely loved him. He captained the Rajasthan Royals to an inaugural IPL Championship, he won a World Cup and numerous Ashes triumphs, and he also played on/off for my home county of Hampshire for 7 seasons, captaining them for 3 of those and describing the experience of living and playing cricket on the south coast of England as one of the happiest sporting times of his life. I never saw Shane in action for Hampshire but I did have the enormous pleasure as a child seeing another cricketing hero play for my home county, West Indian great Malcolm Marshall. I also saw my all time cricketing hero once playing against Hampshire, the larger than life figure of Ian Botham, then playing for Somerset.
Shane is up there with my two cricketing heroes and I’m so saddened at his passing today. I’ve been my usual overly emotional self of late and hearing of Shane’s death early this afternoon really crushed my cricketing soul. Readers of my articles from this Winter’s Ashes series in Australia will recall that I spoke effervescently about Shane’s natural and open style of commentating and the sheer enthusiasm and fun he still had for the game of cricket. Common sense, straight talking, encyclopaedic cricket knowledge and all sprinkled with barbed humour from a man so beloved for his admission(s) of guilt and the redemption he’d found with all those he wronged in the past. Whereas Malcolm Marshall was sheer poetry in motion and Ian Botham living out the dreams of every cricketer from my vintage, Shane was a force of nature who like so many who have redefined and dare I say reinvented their own sport (Tiger Woods/Michael Jordan) willed themselves and/or their teams to win, and to win time and time again. Shane made leg spin bowling sexy again! He revelled in the limelight but became very quickly bewildered by it and so very quickly overcome and consumed by the rapacious nature of it too. He became public property and a man who stresses time and again to be the very opposite in every regard to the public image foisted upon us.
One of life’s hardest lessons is the realisation that every one of us has feet of clay, even those we admire, love and hold in heroic esteem from afar. A light has gone out, and an incredibly bright, effervescent, lively, introspective, candid, open and God like light it was too.
May your God bless you Shane Keith Warne.
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