The Sunday Times Magazine • 11A
t 9.23pm on Wednesday, March 30, shafts
of light picked out the top tier of seating at
the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s darkened
southern end. There it was, suddenly bright
as day, in white block letters on black:
“SHANE WARNE STAND”. Behind the
giant new signage, Warne’s children — his
daughters Brooke, 24, and Summer, 20, and
his son, Jackson, 22 — were in black. Jackson
wore the scarf of his father’s favourite
Australian rules football club. Images of
Warne pulsed from huge screens. The strains of Frank
Sinatra’s My Way poured from invisible speakers.
Everyone knew it was coming, but somehow it
remained a shock — the moment that the man,
prematurely dead at 52, became the monument.
For 26 days, Australians had been coming to terms
with the sudden passing of the cricketer rivalled only
by Don Bradman as the nation’s best. Now, at the
climax of Warne’s state memorial service, as the stand’s
new name was unveiled, it was being made official,
permanent — and enormous. Previously known as the
Great Southern Stand, it was completed in 1992, the
year of Warne’s debut to Test cricket, at the end from
which he always bowled. It seats 45,000, more than
any entire cricket ground in England. It says something
about Warne’s stature among his countrymen that the
gesture felt roughly the right size.
Some 50,000 people were at the MCG for the
memorial, and more than a billion people tuned in
worldwide to watch it on television — 300 million
of them in India alone — with musical tributes by
Warne’s pop star friends Elton John, Kylie Minogue,
Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams and Chris Martin. “It’s
our Princess Diana moment,” says the actor Rhys
Muldoon, a longtime poker buddy of Warne. And as
with Diana, so with Warne there has been an outpouring
of public affection and grief. Warne was loved around
the world as much for his generosity, humour and
straight-talking ways as for his genius as a spin bowler.
He was a man of the people. For years his chauffeur
was someone he met while sneaking a cigarette in
the street, hired because the fellow was relaxed about
Warne smoking in the car. Australians, comfortable
with wealth but wary of the highfalutin, approved of
his plain tastes and knockabout everydayness, and after
his death made offerings at the giant statue of him near
the MCG’s Gate 2: beers, pies, baked beans. His last
meal, it has been established, was toast and Vegemite,
an Australian staple.
Warne lived a rollicking life, charted by headlines for
his colourful antics both on and off the pitch. During a
15-year international career he became the first player
to surpass 700 Test wickets — his record of 708 later
broken by Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan. Off the
field, his peccadillos were the stuff of tabloid fodder.
Warne’s ex-wife, Simone, to whom he was married
from 1995 until 2005, also sat in the audience at the
memorial, having composed her own tribute to him
on social media in which she emphasised that his
“greatest love” was their three children. The couple
were estranged by his sexual prodigalities. But they
remained close.
Not at the memorial, apparently due to being
too distressed, was the actress Liz Hurley, with whom
Warne had a three-year relationship after meeting
her at the races in July 2010. They had continued
trading compliments after breaking off their
engagement in December 2013. Warne called thetime they spent together “the happiest of my life”.
Hurley called him her “lionheart”.
The manner of his death — he suffered a suspected
heart attack while on holiday with mates at a luxury
villa complex on the Thai island of Koh Samui — filled
the papers once again with rumour and speculation.
His manager, James Erskine, was quick to stamp down
on outlandish theories. “He was on holiday, having a
lie-down, siesta, he hadn’t been drinking, he’d been
on this diet to lose weight,” he said. “He hated drugs,
so nothing untoward.” Greg Chappell, the former
Australian captain, echoed Erskine’s remarks: “He didn’t
need drugs — he was high on life.”
There had, however, been a drugs scandal in Warne’s
life: the star was banned for a year after testing positive
for a diuretic during the 2003 World Cup. Diuretics can
be taken to mask other substances, but Warne always
insisted that his mother had given it to him for an
innocent reason — to help with his weight loss. He
admitted to a certain vanity. “I don’t mind being called
vain,” he once told Men’s Health magazine.
He had just come off a two-week liquids-only diet
when he died. Four days earlier he had shared an old
photo of himself with his 1.3 million followers on
Instagram, saying: “Operation shred has started
(10 days in) & the goal by July is to get back to this shape
from a few years ago! Let’s go.” Erskine noted: “He did
go on these ridiculous sorts of diets and he was just
finished with one. It was a bit all or nothing. It was
either white buns with butter and lasagne stuffed in the
middle or he would be having black and green juices.”
In what could have been words for his own eulogy,
PREVIOUS PAGES AND THIS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES Warne described his approach to life in an Amazon
“I SMOKED,
I DRANK AND
I BOWLED A
BIT OF LEG
SPIN. THAT’S
ME. I DON’T
HAVE ANY
REGRETS”
Above: Elton John performs via satellite link during Warne’s memorial service
at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, attended by 50,000 people. Below: the
cricketer’s son, Jackson, pays tribute with daughters Summer, left, and Brooke➤