Long before David Warner emerged as Australia’s demolition man, before Rabada and Bumrah sent wickets flying in the middle, decades before Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson topped batting charts time and again, and even before Steve Smith exemplified the art of hitting Ashes hundreds with superlative ease, there was a certain Shane Warne.
Sorcerer. Trailblazer. Magician. And a bit of an enigma.
No Shane Warne tribute can ever be rendered complete without adding a string of cosmological adjectives. He might have been a match-winner, but it often seemed that in the middle of the 22 yards, Warne was close to capitulation. Perhaps the greatness of Shane Warne stemmed from the fact that every time he plunged to the barren emptiness of existence, edging closer to the inevitable fall, his talent found a way to rescue the cricketer from the brink of a crisis.
No cricketer in the game’s modern history achieved as much as he scripted sensational headlines. And no cricketer was admired as much around the world as he was often berated for coloring the sport with dubious acts. No Shane Warne tribute can ever avoid the ground reality that Warne’s complex, somewhat fidgety personality often seemed inclined to earn a notorious reputation, just the way it was known for its proclivity to spin a web of complexity around the batsmen on the 22 yards.
Warne was his own prisoner as also the maker of his own destiny.
It seems the Cricket world and its frenzied lot witnessed for a period of a decade and a half, two identically different Shane Warnes.
On the one hand, it seemed there was a man who was driven to disturb the stumps, plumb batsmen in the front, regale at the prospect of an Australian victory along with his mates and on the other, a somewhat troubled personality who was known more for his penchant to court controversy.
And perhaps at the peak of this catatonic war- between the ace leg-spinner and the mere mortal behind the blooming personality- lay modern sport’s great cricketing journey, defined as much by triumphs as tribulations.
For every Shan Warne feat, whether the sensational “ball of the century” (to Mike Gatting) there’s the image of a Warne perplexed by a string of inquiries following the use of diuretics (banned substance). Similarly, for every Warne-special, picture the 40 wickets in the 2005 Ashes series, there’s also the tyrannical image of Warne and Mark Waugh being quizzed for their involvement with the bookies.
And the more Warne’s career graph was saddled in controversy, the more the sportsman in him fought to avoid banishment; to extend his run in the game, to emerge as a reborn, time and again.
Shane Warne Tribute: From white-ball magic to red ball dominance
Perhaps it may not be wrong to suggest that Shane Warne’s greatness stems as much from his awe-inspiring numbers as from the impact he had, often single-handedly in bringing celebrated batting orders down to its knees.
Lara, Hooper, and Chanderpaul! Dravid, Sachin, Ganguly! Mahela, Sanga, Jayasuriya! Anwar, Inzamam, Afridi!
Few spinners troubled some of the leading batsmen in the world quite like Warne. He was both a master of bowling consistently at around the nagging line of the batsmen, extracting the most from the cracks on the surface as he was of troubling them with the flight.
He wasn’t afraid to pitch the ball up. He seldom bowed out of a challenge. At its peak, contests between Lara vs Warne and Sachin vs Warne were about as attractive headline materials as a Michael Jackson performance during a Superbowl half-time!
The enduring enigma
You can both stand in wonder of a record that states over 1,000 international wickets and treat it- if you are a budding cricketer- as a benchmark to improve your performance.
You can both be amazed by the longevity of Warne’s career – 339 international appearances- as well as get lost in the amazing number of times the scorecard reads, “caught Gilchrist, bowled Warne!”
But the greatest Shane Warne tribute, if it must be said, is the respect his bowling action generates to this day. The very sight of budding cricketers going round the action, whether in a proper playing field, in a tiny park in front of a house or even in the backyard of one’s house approaching the popping crease with that stylish, high-arm action is an indication that Warne may have retired from the pitch, but not from the 22 yards.
Well, bowled Shane. Happy 50th!