2) During the 1980s, after the Australians lost three out of four Ashes series and four out of five of the Frank Worrell Trophies, the Australian Cricket Board appended a cricket wing to the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) program in 1987. In 1990, a twenty-year old Warne was taken in as one of the ‘scholars’ — according to Gideon Haigh, the only time such a term was tagged to this leg-spinner.
3) It was at the Institute thatDamien Martynand Justin Langer came across Warne for the first time. He was an overweight youth sitting by himself, tucking into a family-sized pizza and guzzling down a can of Victoria Bitter
4) At the Academy, Jack Potter, one of the managers of the cricket programme, taught him the fiendishly difficult skill of the flipper
5) When he played his first Test match, against India at Sydney in 1992, Warne weighed 97 kilos
6) The first One Day game Warne ever attended was one of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cup matches at VFL Park. The first Test was the 1982 Melbourne affair which Australia lost to England by three runs
7) At Colombo, with Sri lanka at 150 for 7, captain Border tossed the ball to his young leg-spinner. At that juncture Wane had a Test bowling record of 1 wicket for 346 runs from 93 overs. And he quickly finished the innings bagging the three remaining wickets. Australia won by 16 runs. They were not great scalps. None of the batsmen he dismissed that day ended his Test career with an average more than 6. However, this faith or hunch or simply a decision that could easily have gone horribly wrong — whatever it was for Border —gave Warne the foothold from which he climbed to the highest of peaks
8) Once at Trent Bridge Robert Croft hit him for six and was watching the replay on the giant screen. Warne told him, “Don’t worry mate, you will be able to see the replay again in a couple of minutes.” He was right
9) Sachin Tendulkar scored 1209 against Australia in 12 Tests when Warne bowled at him, at an average of 60.45 with five hundreds.Brian Laraplayed eight more Tests against Warne, scored 1837 at 54.02 with the same number of centuries. Kevin Pietersen scored 963 at 53.50 in 10 Tests with two identical scores of 158. No other batsmen came remotely close to matching their feats. Warne prevailed over almost all his opponents
10) With his first ball againstEngland, in his first Ashes Test, Warne produced a spectacular delivery thatbowled Gatting. It became recognized as being of considerable significance in not just the context of the match or series, but as "The ball of the century"
11) Arriving in England for the first time, he was prevailed over by Border not to deploy any of his varieties when Australia played at Worcester. He was not played in the Texaco Trophy matches as well. The result was that England actually got to see him only when he ran in to bowl to Mike Gatting in the Manchester Test
12) One of the famous quotes of Warne was: “Part of the art of bowling spin is to make the batsman think something special is happening when it is not.” His mystery deliveries, always discovered before Ashes series, were often figments of his imagination which preyed on the batsmen’s minds
13) Another characteristic quote of Warne ran, “It is the batsmen who worry about combination, not the bowlers”
14) There were more tricks than just the rip on the ball. The elaborate field placing, the winces, the facial expressions, the expectant appeals that started with the release of the delivery and stopped with a curious look and hint of smile if nothing happened. If there was an appeal turned down, the umpire was given a startled stare. Warne could sometimes cajole out a shocking decision, he did so from Steve Bucknor against Andrew Strauss at Adelaide in his final Ashes series in 2006-07
15) Once Sourav Ganguly patted near half-volleys defensively. Warne walked up to him, pointed at Sachin Tendulkar at the other end and said, “People have come here to watch that man play his strokes, not to see you block.” Soon, Ganguly stepped out, misread a ball horribly and was sprawling on the ground as he was stumped
16) For a long time Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne never really got along. In the heat of the battle it couldn’t be picked, they buried their differences for the sake of the team. But beyond the boundary things weren’t good between them
It actually began in the ‘Pura Cup’ game between Victoria and Western Australia in the late 1990s when Warne mercilessly sledged Gilchrist when he was batting
17) The problems continued well into his post-international cricket days. Even in early 2013, Warne was fined $4500 and banned for a match for using obscene language, making inappropriate physical contact with Marlon Samuels and showing serious dissent at an umpire’s decision during a Big Bash League Match
18) Warne did have the ability to feign innocence, almost literally like the adolescent kid led or laid astray by trusted people in his life. After swallowing Moduretic, he came up with the tale that he had been badgered into taking it by his mother Brigitte, a sterling lady of German descent. He confessed tearfully to his teammates.
Ricky Ponting later told the media that Warne was guilty of using drugs, as also stupidity. When Gilchrist said in his reaction, “I think there’s no doubt that people don’t like being deceived,” Warne was bitter enough to proclaim to a mutual acquaintance that he would never speak to Gilchrist again
19) Warne was never really a stickler for fitness drills. Ian Chappell tells the story of Warne bounding down to him before a match and saying, “Why are we doing these stupid 45-minute fielding drills? What I need is to bowl a few balls at the nets and then sit in the dressing room, have a smoke, a cuppa tea and think about the guys I have to bowl at today.” Chappell and Warne agreed that the leg-spinner should have played in the former’s era
20) Steve Waugh and Warne had a few differences in their time. In his Shane Warne’s Century rating cricketers he had played with, the leg-spinner ranks his captain at No 26, saying he was less aggressive and not a big risk taker. Waugh, in his Out of my Comfort Zone hints at some irritating characteristics of Warne, although they are all but lost in the bulk of the book
21) In the 2005 Ashes tour took place, Warne ended with 40 wickets at 19.92 apiece, 249 runs at 27.66. It was perhaps the best of all his Ashes campaigns. Yet, the image that remains embossed in our minds is that edge from Pietersen that flew into his hands and out, that perhaps cost Australia the Ashes for the first time in nearly two decades
22) In 2013, during the Ashes, it was painful to watch Nathan Lyon, perhaps in a desperate bid to call on the spirit that had confounded the earlier Englishmen, proceeding to bowl round the wicket as Warne had done. Only neither did he break the ball the same way, nor nearly as much. In between this tale of the Australian struggle, during a lunch interval, the former leg-spinner popped up on the giant screen, demonstrating his esoteric art for a television channel. A few days shy of 44, he had played his last international match six years earlier, having restricted himself to a handful of matches in the Indian Premier League and the Big Bash League since then. And here he was, appearing in front of the camera to share the secrets of one of the most difficult crafts of the game. He spoke briefly about a plan, where he would pitch each delivery of an over and how much he would turn each one of them. And casually taking his five walked and three trotted paces to the crease, he proceeded to do bowl his talk. Every ball landed exactly where he had promised, and ended precisely where he had predicted
23) With the camera spotting Warne having a chocolate ice-cream bar, Harsha Bhogle remarked on television that it was perhaps the most harmless thing in his hand. He hinted that he could neither bowl leg-breaks nor text with the ice-cream
24) Captaining Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League (IPL) after having been acquired for a whopping $450,000, he spiced up the outfit both in terms of glamour and insight. The four overs he bowled in every match were impeccably planned, the strategies on the field threshed out to perfection, and when required he was not averse to hitting a couple of sixes to earn victories. Twelve wins resulted in 14 matches, and the Royals won the first edition of the tournament.
Although in the most pungent version of cricket, the results led many to voice the claim that Warne was the best captain Australia never had
25) Warne took charge of the Hampshire side, leading it from second division to within striking distance of the county title. And there he struck a close friendship with Kevin Pietersen, the explosive South Africa born batsman knocking on the English cricketing doors, with whom he would form a dashing debonair duo that rivalled the post-War legend of Keith Miller and Denis Compton. The duo could be spotted every evening, drinking themselves to glory in the Southampton pubs
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