With the sudden, tragic passing of Shane Warne, cricket has lost one of its most compelling and charismatic characters, as well as perhaps its greatest player.
The loss of Warne has left the game stunned, because he was a cricketer who transcended borders. Fans from far beyond Australia were tormented by his beguiling bowling across his 15 years playing international cricket, but they still loved him.
Since Warne burst onto the scene with the delivery dubbed simply “the Gatting Ball” or “the ball of the century” at Old Trafford in 1993 – his very first ball in Ashes cricket – kids all over the world have tried leg-spin.
As Virender Sehwag, the former India opener, said on Twitter: “The man who made spin cool”. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Warne was a central figure in perhaps the greatest side to play the game, the Australians of the 1990s and 2000s.
He was their key point of difference: a leg-spinner who could attack or defend whatever the conditions, allowing them to beef up the batting. It helped that he was also an outstanding slip fielder and a very handy batter who was twice dismissed in the nineties but never made an international century. They swept aside all before them in Test and ODI cricket.
Warne was that team’s point of difference off the field, too. He was a rebel who stayed up late drinking, smoking, flirting and doing anything else he could get away with. He was not an avowed disciple of the Baggy Green like so many of those he played with. He was a man apart.
Warne understood that the sport, even at the very highest level, was supposed to be fun, not a grind or a chore.
If there was a choice, he would always take the attacking option. He enjoyed adding theatre to the game, whether through wise-crack sledging, predicting how he would get batters out, or the bogus invention of a new delivery before almost every game he played. He was a potent cocktail of audacity and joie de vivre.
That is all before we have even touched on the sheer skill of the man. For a man of his size, Warne had enormous, powerful hands, the sort that gobble up a mere mortal’s in a handshake. He credited them, and a stint in a wheelchair when breaking both legs as a child, for his extraordinary ability to bowl wrist-spin.
His first love was Australian rules football, and he came mighty close to representing St Kilda, the local team, of which he was an avid supporter.
Fortunately, he found cricket. And with the help of the rugged former Aussie spinner Terry Jenner, became the greatest leggie the game has seen. A tough Test debut against India in 1992 was soon behind him and, from that dizzying moment at Old Trafford in 1993, he flew. He had every weapon a leg-spinner could dream of, but kept striving to improve, adding more potent deliveries to his armoury.
Upon his retirement in 2007, he was the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket with 708. A couple of weeks earlier, he had taken his 700th, Andrew Strauss (who would become a good friend), at his home ground, the MCG. A cricket ground can rarely have produced a louder roar.
His personal life was – put lightly – colourful.
Since retiring, Warne has remained every bit as box office. His every move have been the subject of intense media scrutiny in both Australia and the UK, where he usually spent the summer months. Even as a divisive commentator, Warne was an absolute must listen, especially when discussing captaincy and spin. He was widely accepted to be the greatest captain Australia never had.
There were, of course, darker moments in Warne’s life and career. His personal life was – put lightly – colourful, but he found himself in hot water with cricket authorities too.
In 1998, it emerged that he and his friend and colleague Mark Waugh had accepted money from a bookmaker in exchange for information and, in 2003, he was suspended for a year after testing positive for a banned diuretic found in weight loss pills he was given by his mother. Somehow, he returned an even better bowler.
Warne knew how to hold a grudge - his commentary potshots at Steve Waugh, his legendary captain, have become infamous - but he had an enormous number of friends in the game all around the world.
All of them are deep in mourning for one of the most magnetic characters they have come across.
