Shane Warne: An athlete who transcended the sport to enter the zeitgeist of an entire generation of cricket

It was the summer of 1994 when I fell in love with cricket. The sides touring England that year were New Zealand and South Africa. At the end of that season, I was given a VHS tape of a review of the cricketing year and there was a feature on Shane Warne. Being new to the sport in a time before the Internet was something I had in my life, this was my introduction to him. I was smitten straight away. The bleached hair, the Aussie strut, the ball that turned past bats or off their edges — even in highlight form, I could see there was something very special.

That winter England were touring Australia. I didn’t have satellite TV in my house at the time, my father being unwilling to pay for it. So, when the Ashes Tests were on, I slept on the sofa at my sister’s house. Her husband had subscribed to the full sports package. I fought so hard to stay awake, waiting for the shine to go off the new ball and for them to toss it to Warne. The idea of every ball being an event is such a cliché, but with an on-song Warne it was also true.

File image of Shane Warne. AFP

I could never stay awake much past the lunch break, but I recorded the day’s play. When I got back from school, I would collect the tape from my sister’s house and rush home to fast forward through the other bowlers so I could see Warne do his thing. As a fan of English cricket, my heroes were still the batters he made look foolish, but more than any other cricketer from overseas, it was Warne who drew me into this game enough for it to become a lifelong obsession.

Warne has a special place in the heads of English cricket fans, enjoying a rent-free existence there. He was part of one of the greatest teams that was ever assembled, but it was always him that one would be waiting for. Sure, England had made it to 45/1 after the first hour, but Warne hadn’t bowled yet. If England lost early wickets to McGrath it was all the worse because there was Warne to come. Another sporting cliché was just as true of Warne — he had an aura.

It was always on the biggest stage where Warne would hold sway. He has 195 Ashes wickets, a record that will probably never be broken. He has 32 Cricket World Cup wickets, an average of 19 and an economy rate of under four. There would be many more wickets if he had played the 2003 event, a tournament that was during his absolute peak, but a ban for taking diet pills his mum had given him meant he missed that one.

And this brings us to the other aspect of Warne that made him so endlessly fascinating. Like all the greatest sporting heroes, he was flawed. He made silly mistakes, something that brought him down from the heights he could reach on the field. This made him relatable. Warne is Diego Maradona rather than Gary Lineker and this is what made him all the more fascinating. What would Shane do next, was the question on everyone’s mind!

Once his international career was done he turned up at the IPL with a team no one expected to do well, and won it. Even as his powers faded, he still succeeded. So many batters got out playing the man and not the ball.

That IPL win was a brilliant punctuation mark toward the end of an incredible career. His time with the Melbourne Stars after this was less successful but no less eventful. Warne commentated on his own bowling through an on-field microphone and got into spats with opponents. Even when the cricketing skill was waning, the entertainment factor remained.

That Warne passed away so young, something that still doesn’t feel real, has created shockwaves in cricketing circles. But his passing will be something that resonates much further. There are not many cricketers who transcend their sport. Warne is one of them, and not just in Australia. He is one of those athletes who is part of our shared zeitgeist. His image instantly recognisable, his feats endlessly documented.

There are so many cricket fans who fell in love with the sport because of Shane Warne. Countless kids trying to bowl leg-spin in the garden, only realising how impossibly difficult it is after they were hooked onto the sport. There are few cricketers who brought as much joy as Shane Warne. He was and still is one of a kind. We should all be grateful that we had the chance to watch him play.

Bowling, Shane…

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