With his Baywatch persona, bleached blond locks, ear stud, shades and a permanent suntan, one eye silvery grey, the other greeny blue, Shane Warne was one of the finest cricketers of his generation. While thrilling spectators and invariably upsetting the cricketing administrators, as an entertainer as much as a sportsman, he undoubtedly helped rescue Test-match cricket from the doldrums and turn it into the multimillion-pound industry it is today. Single-handedly too, he revitalised the fast-disappearing art of leg-spin bowling, an achievement later acknowledged when Wisden named him as one of their five cricketers of the 20th century.
Few who witnessed it will surely ever forget the first ball he sent down against England at Old Trafford in the summer of 1993. Seemingly drifting down the leg side for four byes, it suddenly curled inwards towards the leg stump before eventually clipping the top off. It left batsman Mike Gatting a somewhat bemused bystander and went on to be dubbed “the ball of the century”. Surprisingly it was not Warne’s favourite.
