OL' 55

What a cricketer; what a man.

Friday the 13^th - how much fun Warnie would have derived from his 55^th birthday falling on that date. Unlucky for batters, eh? Here's the foreword I affixed to the last edition of On Warne.

What a cricketer; what a man.

There will never be another Shane Warne, in part because of the astronomical odds against the original. No Australian cricketer achieved such distinctive greatness; no Australian athlete has attained such unique fame; no Australian man was as discussed, lauded and lampooned, exalted and execrated.

We can almost divide our conceptions of sport in this country into the pre-Warne and post-Warne eras, separated by the fifteen-year pageant of his unexampled successes. When he retired fifteen years ago, he left a hole rather like that left by Bradman, although he remained, in the public gaze, solidly present, a guaranteed newsmaker and unignorable opinion former. He reckoned that? He said what? But we always dutifully attended.

His death, aged 52, in a villa on Thailand’s Ko Samui on 4 March 2022, was as unexpected as any delivery he ever bowled. He had recently been the subject of a lavish documentary updating his story for new audiences and rekindling it for old. In it he looked reflective, almost mellow, accenting his relationship with his three children, and sharing scenes with his doting parents and fond brother.

Our loss could hardly compete with theirs, but remained profound. Warne’s death turned a page on our recollections. Being able to say ‘we saw him’ took on a new complexion; suddenly we were carriers of history, and, in that sense, part of something for whose maintenance we were now strangely responsible. 

It happened that ten years earlier, almost to the day, I started to write On Warne, with that same idea, modestly and provisionally, in mind. Not only had I seen Warne, but I’d had some experience of him; not that I was likely to forget, but it seemed worth getting something down, before the recollection was occluded or adulterated by subsequent events, or simply the fog of fame. It would also be fun, and thus in keeping with his irrepressible spirit. There never was a cricketer so much about fun, his own and others’. 

On Warne is not a biography - I always felt that his story was Warne’s to write. Nor is it a memoir - I cordially loathed those writings ostensibly about Warne that more properly concerned the author. No, it’s an appreciation, because I was, and am, appreciative.  Having started writing about cricket just prior to his advent, I observed and reported the beginning, middle, end and epilogue of his career; since then, like millions of others, I’ve luxuriated in hours of watching vintage Warne, which itself is kind of comment on his specialness. There is a particular delectability to the art of the slow bowler. That slightly extra time the ball takes to reach the other end, not to mention the frequent ungainliness of the deceived batsman, makes a spinner’s wicket into an aesthetic as well as a sporting event. 

Thus, perhaps, the Ball of the Century. No-one had even spoken of a ‘Ball of the Century’ let alone considered candidates before Warne bowled it, 93 years into the 1900s. Yet there seemed, at once, no disputing the tag, and the delivery will be the benchmark of any candidate for the 2000s. It never gets old, like the perfect funny story, the exquisite bon mot or l'esprit de l'escalier.

The mourning of Warne seemed to confirm another impression, of transcendence. For the faithful, Warne was a marvel. With its peculiar mechanics and dynamics, physicality and psychology, the leg-break is as difficult a delivery to bowl as any in cricket’s repertoire. Thirty years ago, it was a skill perilously close to anachronism. Warne then did not simply revive wrist spin. He recast it in his image: bold, flamboyant, cheeky, both natural and artful, both spontaneous and guileful. He was its greatest exponent and its most enthusiastic expositor. No other sport places such a premium on deception, and Warne was the great deceiver, while remaining correspondingly open about everything he was doing.

Nobody choreographed an over like Warne. Nobody hovered at the end of their mark as pregnantly. Nobody played on the batsman’s mind so incessantly. Nobody eyeballed at an umpire as searchingly. His solution to every cricket predicament was: ‘Throw the ball to me.’ Who would not wish a little of that self-confidence for themselves? He was part of a great, great team that might over time, given the temper of some in its ranks, have grown a little grim. With Warne in proximity, that was never a possibility. To the green and gold, he added the colouration, the light and the shade, the noise and the music.

But if you didn’t know cricket, Warne was a marvel too. You did not need to understand the lbw law, or have a feel for the fine shadings of field placement, to twig that Warne was a prodigy with the ball, a presence on the field, and a personality off it. He remained, as was widely repeated at his death, a truly demotic figure, who for all his unique gifts continued looking, sounding and behaving like his countrymen. He smoked. He drank. He carried some weight. He favoured plain food, home comforts. He liked fast cars. He enjoyed a little luxury, and could be flash, if at the same time careless of appearances. He could have been from no other country. There was something piquant about Warne’s passing in the same week as Neighbours; both, in their time, were cultural properties that to a wider world embodied Australia.

Nobody could have been so incorrigibly themselves. He denuded the word ‘controversial’ of all meaning. He created new rules of celebrity engagement by being almost entirely unapologetic. Australian cricket has been chock full of great players, but comparatively short on, and even somewhat leery of, glamorous and gaudy ones. Yet for fifteen years, cricket in these parts commanded the services of the country’s best known public man. Not since Bradman has that been true, and never to the same degree.

Despite our frequent qualms about celebrity, furthermore, Warne proved a generally wholesome advertisement for it. He lived large; then larger still. He embraced all the opportunities for indulgence that attention offered, always with the possibility of mishap or miscalculation. He experienced disappointment but seldom expressed regret. He occasionally craved privacy but never sought seclusion. He was irrepressible, impenitent, uncancellable. In some ways, he cut fame down to size, seeming to be quite unaffected by it, while at the same time attentive to its obligations. The most poignant detail of Warne’s death, I felt, was that companions went to his aid when it appeared he was a few minutes late for a 5pm rendezvous, because everyone knew that the great man was never willingly late. He was, at all events, a notably courteous man - amiable, approachable, adept at putting strangers at their ease, capable of the gesture that recognises other people. I never left an interaction with him without thinking how normal he was, given how abnormal his way of life entitled him to be.

In unselfconsciously attending to his sporting renown, further, Warne got a great deal right. He quit at or near his peak. There was no tailing off; there was no equivalent of the awkward twilight of Borg or the late fights of Ali. He played just one Test match after that epic Boxing Day in 2006 in front of his own fans, where he became the first Australian to 700 Test wickets. Having let the wheel turn full circle, he then gave it a little extra spin, captaining Rajasthan Royals to the inaugural Indian Premier League. But simply to utter ‘Warnie’ was to commune in a celebration of cricket’s good fortune in his prowess; in any conversation concerned with him, a smile was never far away. It is hard to believe that he is gone. It is almost hard to believe he existed. On finishing at last, he seemed to take a whole way of playing with him; it sealed up on his exit. Imagine Warne observing all the restrictions and obligations that come with modern sporting contracts, filling out a wellness form or sitting through a Zoom meeting about culture; he couldn’t even abide a ‘No Smoking’ sign. Oh no, there will never be another Warne. One was quite extraordinary enough.