It’s a strange thing, to fall in love with a sportsperson, and harder still to explain why. Let us begin by stipulating that the greats all have two things in common: Talent, yes; but, more importantly, a never say die attitude. A great player, or a great team, is never truly beaten, and their greatness is always most evident in adversity: Think Rafael Nadal, fighting back from two sets down. Or the great Dublin or Kilkenny football and hurling teams of recent years, always just a few moments of brilliance away from victory. Or Lewis Hamilton, driving through the field to win from last on the grid. Or Sonia O’Sullivan, kicking for home on the final corner. Or Muhammed Ali, on the ropes, but only a punch away from victory. Or Manchester United, winning the European Cup in injury time. Or Tiger Woods, on a charge, in his red top, on the last day of a major.
In Shane Warne’s case, my own love affair began in 1999, with his team on the ropes and half beaten already.
Not many Irish people will remember, but in 1999, England hosted the Cricket World Cup, and the BBC – in a time before the ubiquity of Sky Sports – had the TV rights. And so it was that one Saturday afternoon, with nothing else on, at 15 years of age, I found myself watching Australia versus South Africa in the semi-final.
At the time, Cricket was not a sport much discussed in rural Monaghan. It was, we all knew (and many of us still know) boring, and British, and the rules were a mystery. The language is almost unintelligible to the uninitiated. It is the sport of googlies, and silly mid off, and leg before wicket, and stopping the game for lunch and tea and cucumber sandwiches. Real men, as we all know, don’t play cricket.
It was reserved for stuffy upper-class Englishmen, and more to be mocked than watched. In that attitude, I was no different. Had it not been the only thing on, I’d not have been watching. I’d have sooner watched lawn bowls.
And so, it was something of a fluke that around about the exact moment I changed the channel and happened to land on the cricket, the Australian captain, with his team in trouble, tossed the ball to Shane Warne. Australia (I later realised) had badly underperformed while batting, scoring just 213 runs. In response, South Africa were cruising along to victory, with 48 runs already on the board, and plenty of time to score the rest. Australia, it turned out, needed something special. A moment of magic.
The first thing that struck me about Warne was that he didn’t much look like a sportsman. He looked more like, well, someone like me: A bit chubby, not especially fit, and not really like an elite athlete. And then, as I was sceptically watching, playing this boring, stuffy, silly, impenetrable sport, he did…. this.
Helpfully, this is the only video of it I can find, and it’s in slow motion:
The ball leaves his hand. It hangs in the air for an age. It seems to drift from left to right as we watch. The batsman, naturally, follows it with his bat. Then it bounces and just… rips. The batsman is looking one way, the ball is going another. It hits the stumps. And even someone who has never watched a moment of cricket before that knows that it means the batsman is out.
Warne didn’t even run in to do it. He walked.
Watch international cricket for a while, and you’ll know this is not the norm. The norm is elite athletes, charging in, sinews straining and muscles pumping, trying to bowl as fast as they can. Warne just saunters in, bowls it slowly, and leaves a bewildered batsman standing there blinking, wondering what on earth has just happened.
Immediately, that very day, a 15 year old me searched the house for a sliotar, a tennis ball, or anything I could, to see if I could do what Warne had just done. As it turned out, I could not. But man, did I try. My father, I recall, thought I had gone mad altogether. From that day on, I was (and remain) cricket mad.
In the aftermath of his sudden death this weekend, one amazing thing was the realisation that in that, I was by no means alone. Warne inspired thousands of people like me, around the world, to try and figure out his tricks. One of his many legacies is just that: hundreds of thousands of young people, tossing a ball from their hands, trying to make it spin. He made somebody who had been brought up to think of cricket as boring and dull fall in love with the game, and, it turns out, he had that effect on far more people than just me.
Off the field, he broke all the rules: He smoked like a chimney. Drank like a fish. Partied like a college student. Got himself into all kinds of trouble of the kind that you just don’t associate with cricket. And on the field, despite all that, he kept walking in, when his team needed him, and doing things that seemed to defy the laws of physics:
Shane Warne V Andrew Strauss 🏏 #RIPShaneWarne pic.twitter.com/fnyFtHMjdN
— Chris Chambers (@Chris_Chambo_) March 4, 2022
In the 2005 Ashes, he single-handedly terrorised the English, even in a losing effort. When his team needed him, he would almost casually produce a piece of magic, as if on command. To watch Warne was to watch his opponents, blinking, and wondering what he had just done, and how.
Leg spin, the kind of bowling Warne employed, is the hardest art in cricket, and one of the hardest in all of sports. Bowling the ball with your right hand, you try to make it spin from right to left when it lands on the pitch. It involves a flick of the wrist at the second the ball leaves your hand, imparting spin with your third finger. Change the position of your wrist, and you can make the ball do all sorts of things: You can impart topspin. Or no spin at all. Or even make it spin the other way. And you don’t need to be super fit to do it. You just need some talent, and endless practice. And despite that, it’s so hard that in the long history of cricket, maybe only three or four players have truly mastered it: Warne, Richie Benaud, Anil Kumble, and, delving into the eons and decades past, Clarrie Grimmett. Of those four, Warne stands apart for his genius.
Here he is, doing what he spent so much time doing, and teaching his art to others. Watch this, and you, too, may find yourself looking around for a tennis ball, or a sliotar, to give it a go yourself.
Last Friday, Warne died, suddenly, at the age of 52. He leaves behind three children, two parents, a brother, and millions of fans around the world who idolise him still, a decade after his last game.
It is hard to explain, as I said above, the sense of loss. 52 year olds who smoke and drink die of heart attacks all the time. I didn’t know Shane Warne, and did not ever meet him, but he was a hero, and an idol, and one of those people who, while he played, you would drop everything to watch. That he is now gone is hard to fathom. The world feels like a poorer, slightly less colourful place today. When the news came through on Friday, I was one of millions who felt genuinely bereft.
In 1999, shortly after he inspired a young me to pick up a tennis ball and try to spin it, Warnie was voted one of the five great cricketers of the 20th century, at a time when he was only halfway through his career. He went on to become one of the greats of the 21st century as well. We will be privileged if we ever see his like again.
At its best, sport is magic, and Warne was the king of the magicians. Below is what he will be remembered for: On a May day in 1993, long before I ever discovered him, or his sport, he appeared in England for the first time, and, with his very first ball, created a legend. That legend will never fade. May he rest in peace.
What a ball. What a player.
RIP Shane Warne
— Tim Gatt (@TimGatt) March 4, 2022