Shane Warne: The wizard who glorified spin bowling

Shane Warne's death comes a day after Australian cricket legend Rod Marsh.

Spin maestro Shane Warne made his craft look so easy, it will forever be surreal to watch him rip the ball off the turf, almost effortlessly.

Spin was always a craft that ranked much after the aggressive fury of running in, and bowling fast. That brute display of sporting excellence always overshadowed the guile and shrewdness of spin bowling. Shane Warne debuted in a decade when cricketing heroes were more often that not swing bowlers, or batsmen with swagger and class. None of that charisma was reserved for spin bowling. But it took just the Gatting bowl for the world to sit up and notice. That one delivery to one of England's better players of spin changed the way the world looked at leg spin. A young spinner suddenly became the object of intrigue for fans, rivals, commentators, the entire cricketing world. Opponents were arguably mesmerised, and almost fearful of facing him. Warne's talent made the innocuous-looking leg spin a formidable tool of attack. He tormented batsmen the world over with his craft.

Twitter mourns the death of a legend

India once stood on top of the world's spin billboard in the 60's and 70's, when the trio of Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrashekhar ruled the cricketing universe. And since then, arguably no one aside Warne came close to restore spin to its rightful place in the psyche of cricket fans. But Warne was a truly a league apart. He, along with spin greats such as Muttiah Muralitharan and Anil Kumble heralded a new dawn for spin bowlers.

Warne's cricketing career in numbers

One could not have survived Warne's guile easily, certainly not without some talent. Dogged. Wanting to get the batsman out, and always thinking every ball, Shane Warne was a fighting cricketer. And a thinking bowler too. It is quite an irony that Warne did not captain the Australian side of his times. The Gatting bowl will forever epitomise his bowling genius for all of us. Harsha Bhogle puts it well, on the behalf of all of us, "The magic will stay forever".

Follow the tributes to the cricketing legend right here.