Shane Warne: A king-size legacy

“Shane lives in a rarefied bubble. There is no one in his life to tell him if what he is doing is right or not” the words of his ex-wife Simone Callahan summed up the life of Shane Keith Warne. Well, if you were Shane Warne, you couldn’t have lived differently, could you?

When skipper Allan Border threw the ball to him for the first time at Old Trafford in 1993, Shane Warne was just another cricketer, fortunate enough to represent his country at the highest level. And little did we know that the first ball he was about to send down on English soil, would not only change his fortunes as an international cricketer, but would  forever alter the way the art of leg spin was perceived. The delivery which drifted and pitched almost two and a half feet outside the leg pole, must have looked innocuous to the batsman and the shock and disbelief on his face when he realized that it had kissed the top of his off stump, is the greatest testimony to Warne’s genius. For once, it looked as though Gatting had forgotten batting! And it was fittingly serendipitous that another leg spinner, the Aussie great Richie Benaud, was the one who called the moment of magic from the commentary box, with his typical nonchalant  and pauseful  brand of commentary wherein even silence had gravity. As Gatting, one of the better players of spin in the world at the time, was stunned with the gape the ball found through his defense, we had stunned gapes as well! And from then on, almost everything Shane Warne did, had us on the edge of our seats!

Warnie was a man of multiple contradictions. He was the Maradona of cricket in whom talent and trouble had a beautifully symbiotic existence! His prodigious talent saw him prodigiously turning the ball, bamboozling many a good batsman in the world. For instance, former South African Test cricketer Daryl Cullinan, a fine batsman by any yardstick, had no clue which planet he was on, every time he faced Shane Warne! Warnie’s talent and skills had created such a reputation or even a hype around him that the batsman would lose his wicket even before the game started! His leg breaks turned a mile and had a deadly flipper to go with it. Perhaps the only chink in his leg spinning armor was the lack of a good googly or a wrong one but that hardly mattered when you were as good at the other things as Warnie was! Warnie was fierce, extremely competitive and always found a way to win. He could inspire his team to incredible victory from hopeless positions. One’s memory travels back to that night in Mohali in 1996, when the magic of Shane Warne came in the way of West Indies’ passage to a world cup final. Bowling first, the West Indies had reduced Australia to 15 for 4 and later in pursuit of a paltry 208 runs, the Caribbeans were cruising, with 43 runs to get in 9 overs and with 8 wickets in hand. Entered Shane Warne, spun his magical web around the Windies batsmen and they choked. Their dream of making it into the final of the world cup since 1983 was turned into an everlasting nightmare! The West Indian batsmen looked like a swarm of moths flapping their way to self-immolation. They choked,  grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory and Wisden famously recorded it as “West Indies pulled off an extraordinary defeat”

In fact the West Indies were made to choke that night by the genius of Shane Warne. The deadly combination of Warnie’s skills, his indomitable desire to win and uncanny ability to play the mind games proved too much for the former world champions. As much for his talent and guile, Warne was known for getting under the skin of the opponent and sometimes, his own teammates too. He never shied away from a confrontation and put his words to good effect. He had such an intimidating presence, an aggression otherwise alien to a spinner, and as Tom Moody said “Warnie could make you believe that he possessed the trump card even when he didn’t have one!”  The combination of sheer talent and mental toughness, especially in sport, is a very handy combination.

How about Shane Warne- the best captain Australia never had?   The world had seen enough to believe that he would have been second to none had he captained his country. A hitherto unknown bunch of cricketers pitted against the Goliaths of world cricket in a glamorous and expensive T20 cricket league can get intimidated and shrink. But Shane Warne the leader, made the Swapnil Asnodkars, the Naman Ojhas, the Yousuf Pathans and the Ravindra Jadejas stand up to their full height and the result was an unfancied Rajasthan Royals winning the inaugural IPL title. In Warne resided the perfect recipe for an inspirational sporting leader - a brilliant reader of the game, strategist, tactician, man manager and motivator- all rolled into one. But then with Shane Warne, one was never far away from an ‘Argh moment’. He exasperated us as much as he exhilarated us! From his ‘sexcapades’ to the cosmetic surgery to an year-long ban for taking a banned substance, Warne always had enough on his controversy plate to make the administration think that handing over the captaincy to him would be a source of perennial headache. From a distance, it looked as though the man enjoyed the ‘bad boy’ image too as he famously remarked “I liked loud music, I smoked, I drank, and I bowled a bit of leg spin. I don’t have any regrets”

Shane Warne was a character. He stunned us with those viciously turning leg breaks and perfectly directed sliders, he shocked us with his involvement in providing details to bookmakers, he frustrated us with his gambling and drug taking ways, he left us aghast with his accurate predictions as a commentator, and now, he had to leave us in utter disbelief with his death too - for he was Shane Keith Warne. 52 is too early to ago, but for someone with an insatiable lust for life, Warnie lived 20 lives in one, as one of his former teammates put it. You loved him or hated him, you simply couldn’t ignore him. And one is sure that that’s how he would have wanted his epitaph to be read “Incredibly larger-than-life”. Rest in peace, King!