AROUND 7.30 PM India time on Friday, the world of cricket lost not just one of its greatest cricketers but also one its greatest characters. Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne was found dead in his hotel room at Koh Samui in Thailand of a suspected heart attack. He was 52, long retired but active as a commentator, his insights on the game as rare and precious as his art.
That “there was no one quite like…” is often uttered as a formality at farewells and in obituaries. But the cliche could not have been truer in Warne’s case. Few bowled leg-spin like him — 708 Test wickets and 293 ODI wickets are proof of that. Enough it would be to say that no one bowled like him, any bowler across any era.
One of the greatest of all-time.
A legend. A genius.
You changed Cricket.
RIP Shane Warne ❤️ pic.twitter.com/YX91zmssoT
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) March 4, 2022
He was the Donald Bradman of bowling. Apter perhaps, cricket’s version of Diego Maradona. Like the Argentine, he glowed in the gifts nature bestowed upon him, and his quest for the pleasures of life was insatiable. Like that flawed genius of football, he made mistakes in life and the game — both were banned for consuming drugs to aid weight loss — although Warne’s trip never spiralled out of control.
Control, ironically, is perhaps the last trait you would attribute to his bowling; it was all about the magic. And yet, at the heart of it all was immaculate, often preternatural, control of cricket’s most difficult art — a wrist spinner with the control of a finger spinner. There was a calm purpose and the precision of a surgeon in every step. Within that three-stride run-up, he would read the batsman like a psychoanalyst, his bright blue eyes picking little clues.
After such minimalism, would kick in the sorcery. The ball would leave his wrists as if he had, like a magician, whispered life into it. Probably, only Wasim Akram could cajole so much life from a piece of dead leather. The ball whizzed and fizzed in the air with a magnetic drift that lulled the batsman into making a final mistake.
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Half of the batsmen would be caught in the hypnotic trance of the ball’s flight. The rest would be bedevilled by the illusion after pitching. Few turned the ball as precociously as Warne did. The faces of some of the master batsmen who were reduced to wrecks tell the story which, in this day and age, would have been meme-troll gold. The shock on Mike Gatting’s face after the Ball of the Century. Or the awe in the eyes of Andrew Strauss, or Shivnarine Chanderpaul, or Michael Atherton.
Warne was the ultimate magician of cricket’s ultimate magic. And he had all the tools that a merely good bowler could only dream of — leg-break, googly, flipper, skidder, bouncer and even some that he named himself, like the zooter, to spook the batsmen, mostly English.
Often, the tease would begin before he had bowled the first ball. Like a boxer, he would land verbal punches to soften up batsmen, make them react, assert his one-upmanship, and it mostly worked. Before every series, especially Ashes, he would announce the launch of a new variation; during warm-ups, he would train in the farthest corner of the ground, as though he were working secretly on it.
#shanewarne
Warne was the ultimate magician of cricket’s ultimate magic. The blond hair, the beach-bum persona and off-field antics added to the aura.
✍️ SandipGhttps://t.co/Y7Rvy64LQx pic.twitter.com/xg1EZG4wZ9
— Express Sports (@IExpressSports) March 4, 2022
But frequently forgotten in his bowling virtuoso was that he was a terrific fielder at slips and a freewheeling batsman, too, with a Test highest of 99. His incredibly astute cricket brain, capable of spotting technical and mental weakness, prompted many down under to consider him the greatest captain Australia never had. Warne finally ended up the greatest captain Rajasthan Royals ever had, as he plotted their fairy-tale triumph in IPL-1.
The blond hair, the beach-bum persona and off-field antics embellished his halo. He was caught smoking secretly after he had signed an anti-smoking campaign; fined for providing information to a bookmaker in 1994; suspended for 12 months in 2003 for taking a banned diuretic. He dated several women, including celebrities such as Liz Hurley. He trash-talked, infuriated and incensed different people at different times, but the flaws did not diminish his aura, only burnished it.
Warne was 52 when he died, but in the eyes of the cricketing world, he would remain ever youthful, ever Mr Hollywood. He did his bit to keep up that image, sweating in the gym to get fitter than ever before, and undergoing hair-transplants and cosmetic surgeries. Somewhere deep inside, he seemed unwilling to part with his long-parted youth. But in the end, for once, he had to leave in the middle of an unfinished spell, a glorious spell that only he could have bowled.
Content retrieved from: https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/shane-warne-ultimate-magician-of-crickets-ultimate-magic-7801504/.