Australian cricket legend, Shane Warne, was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Thailand following a suspected heart attack. Video / AP / Getty / NZ Herald
OPINION:
Shane Warne, who has died suddenly aged 52, was the greatest of all spin bowlers. It has been a sad week for Australian cricket as Warne's death follows tragically soon after that of their most famous wicketkeeper Rod Marsh.
Warne was a larger than life character, which makes his death from a heart attack all the more shocking, and it was this character which set him above all other spinners. He became the ultimate con-man, deceiving batsmen either off the pitch, in the air or in their minds.
His total of 708 Test wickets has only been exceeded by the Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan. Murali was numerically superior because he finished with 800 Test wickets but an essential difference lay in the character which they brought to their bowling: Murali was defensive until he got on top, Warne was always attacking.
Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan together in Christchurch in 2005. Photo / Photosport
Warne began as a larrikin, before he graduated into being cricket's consummate con-man. He first came to England as the professional for the Imperial Club in Bristol and, rather like Phil Tufnell, belied the upper-crust education he had enjoyed by smoking and drinking. But he cared for his mates too, even when they were humble Bristolian clubbies, as one incident showed.
In a Sunday friendly at Hinton Charterhouse in 1990, Warne was fielding at slip and talking about leg-spin, as he himself would recount, when a short-leg fielder was hit by the ball and swallowed his tongue. Providentially a doctor was on the ground, and saved the life of the fielder, Nick Thomson. Warne, when he returned to England, would check how he was.
Warne soon returned to England in 1993 to bowl the Ball of the Century in the first Test of that Ashes series at Old Trafford. His other major rival for the title of the Best Spinner Ever, Bill O'Reilly, who sustained Australia in the 1930s, never surely mustered such powers of spin as Warne did for that inaugural legbreak.
It was heading way down leg side, for four byes, when its revolutions made the ball curl in towards leg stump then hit the top of off as Mike Gatting aimed unsuspectingly to leg.
If this was the ball of the century, as it was, Warne himself was soon the Bowler of the Century, racing through one Test team after another - especially England - to reach 200 Test wickets.
He never bowled the googly much; acquired the slider by pushing his legbreak through more quickly; and essentially relied on his legbreak in an infinite variety of forms, while camouflaging it all by frequently announcing that he had invented a new delivery. The spinner's best friend, Warne always said, is "natural variation."
A shoulder injury restricted him thereafter but he replaced with cunning what he had lost in powers of spin. No wonder Warne became a poker player on the professional circuit.
He was a master of the psychological arts. Especially when it came to the last over of a Test day's play, he would almost torture a batsman by making him wait, then changing his field, and creating the widest gap in the batsman's mind for self-doubt, if not between bat and pad.
For England, only Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood, when he scored 206 in the Adelaide Test of 2006/07, succeeded in neutralising Warne. Warne did not admit defeat of course on the most placid of pitches: he simply bowled round the wicket into their pads as they kicked him away. Deadlock, yes, but defeat, no.
Otherwise Warne ran through England for a pastime; his hat-trick in the Melbourne Test of 1994/95 was only one of numerous tricks he performed at England's expense. He averaged well over five wickets per Ashes Test: 195 in only 36 games, and at a mere 23 runs each.
Shane Warne celebrates bowling out Herschelle Gibbs at the 1999 ODI World Cup. Photo / Photosport
He was a captain's dream for four different Australian skippers. He started under Allan Border, who stopped the losing which had become habitual in Australian cricket in the 1980s; he so responded to Mark Taylor that Australia became world champions in the mid-1990s, with Glenn McGrath and Warne to back up the work of a great batting line-up; he continued this supremacy under Steve Waugh; and even if Australia finally stuttered in the Ashes series of 2005, Warne reasserted his team and himself in 2006/07, when Australia not only regained the Ashes but inflicted only their second 5-0 whitewash against England.
Only Sachin Tendulkar can claim to have mastered Warne. In 2000/01 in India Warne took only ten wickets at 50 runs each in the three-Test series. Tendulkar, however, had to go into a special camp in order to prepare, by running down the wicket against legbreaks, often delivered from round the wicket, and launching them over long-on and long-off. Nobody else was so skilled.
Warne's mastery was not limited to Test cricket. He bowled the pivotal spell in Australia's World Cup campaign in England in 1999. South Africa were cruising to a modest target in the semi-final at Edgbaston when Warne took charge and preyed upon their nerves.
He always said, when a commentator, that he would pick a verbal fight with an opponent to help him rise to an occasion. This was an example of psychological warfare at its finest as South Africa caved.
Warne's involvement with the Indian bookmaker known as John was the more inglorious side of his character. He and his Australian team-mate Mark Waugh admitted supplying information to John, and were both fined, but insisted they had still been trying to win the matches in question.
One of cricket's all-time great players and characters, Shane Warne, has departed this world. Photo / Photosport
Warne devoted the last years of his first-class career to Hampshire, whom he captained from 2004 to 2007 - though not to the championship - and for whom he took 276 first-class wickets at 25. His powers were waning yet still so prodigious that he led Rajasthan Royals to win the first edition of the India Premier League in 2008.
He was superb at defining each player's role in his team, and at pumping up his tyres, although his year as coach of London Spirit in the Hundred came at the opposite extreme, as they finished bottom.
Warne needed the competitive juices of playing himself. In the field, he was the master.
