Shane Warne often spoke of hoping to bring a bit of rock ’n’ roll to cricket, the sport not being one particularly renowned for it.
As cricket reflects now on his tragic passing at the age of just 52, it is fair to say he succeeded.
Ripping into town with his bleach-blonde hair and his “Ball of the Century” in the Ashes of 1993, Warne looked every bit the rockstar and across the course of a career that spanned three decades, and into his retirement, he lived up to the role in a life of much colour and no shortage of controversy.
In a cricketing sense, Warne’s most serious misdemeanours came early: a 1998 sanction after he and teammate Mark Waugh were found to have accepted money from a bookmaker in exchange for information and a year-long drugs ban on the eve of the 2003 World Cup, after he tested positive for a banned diuretic found in weight loss pills he was given by his mother.
Both quickly faded into insignificance. Famed for the unrivalled brilliance of his leg-spin, Warne’s swagger put bums on seats whenever he had bat in hand, too. He never made a Test match hundred (no player has scored more Test runs without becoming a centurion), but even on the rare cusp of one his principles did not change, holing out off Daniel Vettori when on 99 against New Zealand as he attempted to reach three figures with a fitting flourish in a 2001 Test.
He could be a fiery character between the stumps and in the slips, tempers fraying into an expletive-laden physical confrontation with Marlon Samuels during the second edition of the Big Bash.
More often the jousting was more jovial, Warne being if not the most celebrated then at least an occasionally cutting exponent of the great Australian art of sledging, a highlight coming as he grew frustrated with Sourav Ganguly’s defensive approach during an Adelaide Test against India. “40,000 people haven’t come to see you kick the ball,” he told the batter, before pointing to Sachin Tendulkar at the non-striker’s end and adding: “They’ve come to see this bloke playing shots.” Soon after, Ganguly was stumped trying to hit Warne out of the ground.
He enjoyed (or endured) many a to-and-fro with English crowds, marked out as a public enemy of sorts after his infamous Trent Bridge balcony celebration in 1997, and the home fans offered up little sympathy during his personal struggles of 2005, but a love-to-hate relationship certainly leaned heavily towards the former as his career wore on. The famous chant, “We only wish you were English”, just about summed it up.
Warne’s relationship with England, however, went far beyond the eleven “blokes” he so regularly tormented in Ashes series and the fans who witnessed those biennial bamboozlings.
The tabloid press on these shores became as obsessed with Warne’s private life (which seldom played out in private) as their Australian counterparts, contributing to what the spinner described the lowest point of his life, when stories of extra-marital affairs led to divorce from his wife and mother of his three children, Simone Callahan, on the eve of the 2005 Ashes.
Warne took 40 wickets in the series, which he called the greatest he ever played in, but behind closed doors was in turmoil. “I would play cricket, go back to the hotel and raid the mini-bar,” he revealed in a recent Amazon documentary. “I’d just sit in my room by myself and just drink. I was in my hotel room crying, just berating myself for some of the things I did.”
His subsequent engagement to actress Liz Hurley (he proposed the super model on a super yacht “completely on impulse, in the middle of a dance”, though they never married) brought a degree of celebrity intrigue previously unheard of in cricketing circles.
Warne played most of his cricket in the years when the prospect of a wicket ‘going viral’ could only have meant a groundsman running low on weedkiller but one clip in the early days of in-game ‘mic’d up’ television coverage, in which he described how he planned to take the wicket of Brendon Mccullum in a T20 match before doing exactly that, became a particular hit, perfectly encapsulating Warne’s triple threat of cricketing smarts, skill and charm in one hit.
(It once appeared he had effectively invented the practice years before: during a 1999 Test, Warne was blamed after a voice was picked up remarking that his Australian teammate Scott Muller “can’t throw, can’t bowl”, before responsibility was later claimed by a cameraman named Joe.)
Even so, the various ‘Ball of the Century’ and ‘Warne wickets’ compilation videos on YouTube have racked up tens of millions of views between them and, along with levels of charisma that somehow come close to matching his ability, are no doubt responsible for inspiring a passion for cricket, and spin bowling in particular, in young fans around the world. A select few of them - Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan springs to mind - are now at the vanguard of spin bowling’s second resurgence, as T20 cricket’s most valuable commodity.
Whether playing out on the pitch or on the front pages, Warne’s was a life that was box office throughout.
