78 The Economist March 12th 2022
Obituary Shane Warne
If someoneinvitedhimto afancyrestaurant,ShaneWarne
could tell them there wasn’t much point. A whitebread cheese
sandwich or a bag of chips was just as good for him. Spaghetti bo
lognese was as far as he went in the gourmet department. And
there wasn’t much to beat those warm pies you could buy at stalls,
the ones he could demolish in about 30 seconds, with that sauce
that inevitably ran down his chin and dribbled all over his jacket.
He drank, too. Not only Castlemaine, Foster’s and other patriot
ic brews, but the pints he downed in England in his winter sea
sons, when he discovered pubs. Those really put the weight on. He
smoked like a chimney, lighting up a fag as soon as the dawn
broke. His credo was “Eat. Go. Party!”, and there were plenty of
high jinks to keep the tabloids happy. “Two drinks and two girls
later,” began a sentence in his autobiography, and it could have
started dozens.
He forgot all that, though, when he walked onto a cricket field.
It was as if someone had shut the door behind him. The only traces
of playboy were the peroxide hair, the chunky waistline and the
sexily unbuttoned shirt, as well as the wildly joyous celebrations
when he knocked a batsman over. And there were many, many of
those: 708 wickets in Test matches, 293 in oneday internationals,
at an average of merely 25.5 runs apiece. Certain spells of skill
stood out, such as his 7 for 56 against the thenformidable West In
dies in 1992 and, in 1994, his 8 for 71 against England. Perhaps the
sweetest moment was when he became the first bowler to take 700
Test wickets, at his home ground in Melbourne, when he leapt off
careering round the ‘G as if he was demented.
His secret, a very public one, was that he was a masterly leg
spinner. In an era when most bowling tended to be fast and brutal,
his was slow, subtle and cunning. He made it slower by ambling to
the crease, quickening for a couple of steps, passing the ball non
chalantly from left hand to demon right, then letting the ball rip,drift and bounce to the batsman’s left and spin in sharply, some
times square, to hit the leg stump or be snicked to a nearby catch
er. The ruse was often invisible, and he had many ways to disguise
it, sending the ball low and spinless (a slider), spinning backwards
(a zooter), or with his hand actually facing the other way (a wrong
‘un, called a googly by Poms). His favourite was the backspin flip
per, launched with a snap of thumb and forefinger to fizz out of his
hand and skid fast and low off the pitch. His greatest delight was
not a wicket destroyed but the look of total incredulity on the bats
man’s face, as when in his first Ashes Test against England in 1993,
and with his first ball, he bamboozled Mike Gatting with a choice
Warnie legbreak, “the ball of the century”, and Gatting walked off
shaking his head.
He had other weapons, too. He was a strategist, planning his
moves about six balls ahead, and a psychologist, always seeking to
unsettle a batsman. (Off the field, he became a highlevel poker
player.) Cricket was both a fierce team game and a duel between
two men. Plenty of unsettling he could do with his bowling, luring
his opponent out of his crease, or making him think that some
thing special was happening, even when it wasn’t. Sledging, or
casual taunting, also came in handy, and he loved it, even when he
was sledged back. “Come on, you know you want to!” he would tell
a batsman who was tempted to slog it. Or, to any player undone
with nerves, “I’ve been waiting so long for this!” The only batsmen
who regularly frustrated him were Brian Lara of the West Indies,
Kevin Pietersen of England and Sachin Tendulkar of India, for all
of whom he had immense respect—off the field, at least.
To find himself a cricketer was surprising. He played a bit as a
boy, enough to know that his big strong hands and wrists, a pre
sent from his sporty Mum and Dad, were ideal for a spinner. But as
a teenager he mostly wanted to play Australian Rules Football,
where some stars drove Ferraris and wore earstuds. (He did both
those later, the Ferrari only one of a fleet of beautiful cars.) It took
Kerry Packer’s World Series, launched in 1977, to prove to him that
cricket could be just as cool.
In the national team he struggled at first, doing badly in his
first two Tests against India. He wasn’t ready. But between 1993 and
1998, after rigorous training and dieting with Terry Jenner at the
National Cricket Academy, he bowled like a dream. There were ups
and downs thereafter, but his career averages were extraordinary.
Besides the bowling he was no slouch with the bat, scoring 6,919
firstclass runs, and a nifty fielder, especially in close at slip. “Wis
den’s Almanack” reckoned him one of the five greatest cricketers
of the 20th century, right along with Don Bradman and Garfield
Sobers, and the only bowler.
Off the field the scandals went on, including accepting money
from an Indian bookmaker in 1994 to supply prematch informa
tion, sending explicit messages, sleeping with porn stars and, on
the very eve of the World Cup in 2003, failing a drugs test. Such
missteps cost him his chance to captain Australia. That was a
shame, as he knew he was a firstrate motivator, both from the
oneday internationals he captained and the two teams, Hamp
shire and the Rajasthan Royals, whom he proudly led to victory.
His legions of fans kept the faith through thick and thin. War
nie had done his all for Australian cricket, and under that cocky
charisma, which nearly snared Elizabeth Hurley as his bride, there
was, besides, a friendly and ordinary bloke, whose favourite meal
was Vegemite toast, who never refused a fan an autograph and
who had never finished a book in his life. To see his name in lights
was fine, but he didn’t need it. He played cricket because it was fun
for him and fun for other people. He retired from internationals in
2007 (having at last run out of arse), lamenting the way the game
was now seen as a job and a business, although he had profited
from that as much as anyone. There seemed no place now for char
acters like himself, true entertainers. He had made mistakes, sure,
been silly, but that was because he was only human, no better than
anyone else. Except at one thing. nThe blond bombshellShane Warne, Australian cricketer and the best-ever
leg-break bowler, died on March 4th, aged 52