KEY POINTS:
The author of arguably the most stunning victory in the history of test cricket was asked how he felt the tension when his Australian teammates, Mike Hussey and Michael Clarke, drew close to the target that would all but deliver this Ashes series.
As Shane Warne sat padded-up,
was he sweating out the possibility that a fall of two quick wickets would take him back into the heart of the action? "No, mate," he said. "I wasn't interested in batting. I was drinking pop and eating toasted sandwiches."
Warne is nobody's idea of a super athlete, least of all his own, but at 37 his aura has never blazed so brilliantly. He is the most charismatic performer in the history of cricket and, after reducing England to nothing less than a collective nervous breakdown, he may also be the best, the most influential, the most guaranteed to sow demoralisation into a batsman's heart and mind.
This, certainly, is the regained gravitas he takes to Perth for a third test next week in which he will once again overshadow teammates and opponents alike.
He is not so much a cricketer as a maker of spells. Yes, he is portly and has often displayed away from the field an irresponsibility that would be frowned upon in the kind of feckless beach boy he once was.
He is incorrigible, hedonistic and, before his latest epic performance, one former opponent of great distinction was saying that he is probably cricket's answer to Peter Pan - somebody who either cannot or simply doesn't want to grow up.
Among even his warmest admirers there are fears he will be a lost soul when he has to face the day when he can no longer go out on the field secure in a world that for a decade and a half he has dominated in an extraordinary and relentless way.
Yet that day, once again, has been pushed back, assigned to all the other calamities of old age. For the moment, Warne is as young as he wants to be. He remains the King of Neverland.
There is no limit to the homage being paid to the man who almost single-handedly won a test that many hard judges agree was possibly the most remarkable ever played. Australia came to a near standstill as Warne worked his alchemy on a contest which in the morning had seemed to permit only two possibilities, a win for England, 97 runs ahead with nine wickets standing, or a draw.
Offices and factories in Adelaide were emptied as "grieving" workers - and some bosses - had to rush to the scene of family bereavements, by way of the beautiful Oval which Warne had claimed for his own.
Maybe it should be said there were several reasons why England's hold on the Ashes urn was loosened to the point of hopelessness when they went 2-0 down. We could start with the cascade of runs pouring from the bat of Australian captain Ricky Ponting, Nor can we avoid the fact that England were overwhelmed by the fierce competitive instinct of the Australian game, rising so vengefully out of the Ashes defeat in England in 2005 and expressed superbly by the emerging master batsmen Hussey and Clarke.
Yet, wherever you turned, there was always the sight of Warne, the supreme architect of the Australian victory. In the decisive moments of a match which we were so sure England could not lose after the batting performances of Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen, we were confronted again by the same grim picture painted in the first test in Brisbane - the one of men facing boys.
When England's captain faced the world he was still in shock. Andrew Flintoff wondered how it was possible to lose a test match which his team had dominated for all but an hour. It seemed heartless to remind him that anything can happen in Neverland.
- INDEPENDENT
