KEY POINTS:
It was dubbed "the ball of the century" - a delivery that so comprehensively defeated the amply proportioned English batsman Mike Gatting, that it became a part of cricketing folklore.
The Daily Telegraph's Martin Johnson wrote that it was as treasured a piece of archive footage as ever filmed, because "how anyone could spin a ball the width of Gatting boggles the mind".
On the speakers' circuit, Graham Gooch claimed that if the ball had been a cheese roll it would never have got past Gatting, and Ian Botham reckoned he'd not seen the same wide-eyed look of horror on the batsman's face since someone stole his lunchbox a couple of years previous.
Looking back, Shane Warne's first delivery in Ashes cricket - at Manchester in 1993 - was almost the perfect way to announce the arrival of one of the finest bowlers in the history of the game.
It will remain an epoch-making moment in test cricket, a perfectly-pitched leg-spinner that drifted outside Gatting's pads before spinning back viciously to remove the stunned batsmen's off-bail.
At the time, Warne tried to shrug off his 32nd wicket as a fluke; a description that might have held more credibility had he not continued on to capture another 667 wickets, many of them claimed in similar style.
Such has been the carnage since then that his impending retirement will doubtless come as a huge relief to the scores of batsmen he's tortured over the past 15 years, and may even allow a sounder sleep for Gatting.
To put him in context, Warne was voted by Wisden as one of the five greatest cricketers of the 20th century - with Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Jack Hobbs, Sir Garfield Sobers and Sir Vivian Richards, although he seems unlikely to follow the trend and become a knight of the realm.
Warney's style was more a night on the town.
Now we can look forward to arguments about where he should stand in terms of the all-time greats, particularly as his record-breaking reign has coincided with the career of another phenomenon - Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan.
It might be that Warne is poised to become the first man to take 700 wickets when the Boxing Day test starts at Melbourne, but the mercurial Murali will almost certainly overtake that mark next year and plough on towards the 1000.
There will be those who'd prefer to ignore the Sri Lankan sensation on the grounds of his controversial action, and who will refuse to accept the legality of his success or any suggestion of him being as good as Warne.
The reality, of course, is that Murali has earned his wickets in the same environment and playing under the same rules as Warne, and deserves the same respect as one of the game's greatest players.
Besides, when it comes to the crunch, Murali's action might leave a bit to be desired, but so has Warne's conduct on and off the field, in particular the positive drugs test that forced him out of the 2003 World Cup, and sidelined him for a year.
It wasn't exactly an isolated incident.
Warne lost the vice-captaincy after his phone-sex affair with English nurse Donna Smith; there was the A$4000 ($4600) fine for abusing a South African match official in 1994, the A$5000 fine in 1998 for accepting money from an Indian bookmaker, and the camera-grabbing altercation with a Wellington schoolboy in 2000.
The public betrayal of his now-estranged wife Simone was of a breathtaking scale, if this list of names is anything to go by: Lisa Ramsden, Donna Wright, Helen Cohen Alon, Angela Gallagher, Kerrie Collymore, Rebecca Weeden, Gemma Hayley, Laura Sayers, Julia Reynolds, plus a topless MTV presenter named Emma, and an equally topless TV gardener called Coralie.
For all that, Warne should, and deserves to be, remembered as one of the greatest cricketers of all time; someone who not only excelled in his own right, but virtually started a revolution in the game.
Like Bradman, Muralitharan and Sobers, he was a likely match-winner every time he took the field, and will leave the game in far better shape than it was when he arrived as a peroxided rebel in 1992.
It is time to thank him for the memories; for the enthusiasm, the energy and the street cunning, not to mention the zooter, slider, toppie, flipper and wrong'un.
And most of all, for one particular ball he delivered in 1993.
The complete Shane Warne
Born: September 13, 1969 (Ferntree Gully, Victoria)
Tests: 143
Balls bowled: 40,314
Wickets: 699
Bowling average: 25.49
5WI: 36
10WM: 10
Best bowling: 8-71 v England at Gabba 1994-95
Runs: 3043
Batting average: 16.81
50s: 11
Highest: 99 v New Zealand at Waca Ground 2001-02
Catches: 124
Milestones
First test wicket (on debut)
Ravi Shastri (caught Dean Jones)
3rd test v India at SCG 1991-92
100th wicket (23rd test)
Brian McMillan (lbw)
3rd test v South Africa at Adelaide Oval 1993-94
200th wicket (42nd test)
Chaminda Vaas (caught Ian Healy)
1st test v Sri Lanka at WACA Ground 1995-96
300th wicket (63rd test)
Jacques Kallis (bowled)
2nd test v South Africa at SCG 1997-98
400th wicket (92nd test)
Alec Stewart (caught Adam Gilchrist)
5th test v England at The Oval 2001
500th wicket (108th test)
Hashan Tillakaratne (caught Andrew Symonds)
1st test v Sri Lanka 2003-04
600th wicket (126th test)
Marcus Trescothick (caught Adam Gilchrist)
3rd test v England at Old Trafford 2005
Through the years
1992: 5 tests, 12 wickets at 41.92
1993: 16 tests, 72 wickets at 23.57
1994: 10 tests, 70 wickets at 18.20
1995: 12 tests, 54 wickets at 24.12
1996: 4 tests, 15 wickets at 38.07
1997: 15 tests, 68 wickets at 24.43
1998: 5 tests, 24 wickets at 33.17
1999: 13 tests, 38 wickets at 32.97
2000: 4 tests, 15 wickets at 33.07
2001: 13 tests, 58 wickets at 31.19
2002: 10 tests, 67 wickets at 19.55
2003: No tests
2004: 12 tests, 70 wickets at 24.07
2005: 15 tests, 96 wickets at 22.02
2006: 9 tests, 42 wickets at 33.21
