Not Warne(d) of His Arrival, Not Warne(d) of His Departure

I am lost for words, but I will try and find thousand-odd ones for this article.

And I don’t think I will find those right words, certainly not enough to capture the lifetime of the cricketing connoisseur, or to describe the poetry in motion of this talismanic tweaker or touch on this Victorian’s vices, both on and off the field. There are other innings he played as well, there is the commentator connoisseur, not quite Benaud, but just as sagacious, and then that nearly England coach that he could have been.

Ahh Benaud! There was a drought and a dearth in the spin department in Australia, in fact many saw leg spin as a dying art. Abdul Qadir kept the coals warm, but there was the missing oomph that was needed.

So, enter a regular a podgy lad from Upper Ferntree Gully in Victoria, wavy blonde hair, jewelry adornments, cheekiness from the yap and the trap. To batsman, he laid out the sledges and got the edges. As Nasser Hussain, his competitor turned colleagued writes, “on the sledging. It was like having your own part in the theatre.”

But where does one start with Warne? Because everyone has their own Warne story? That Gatting Ball in 1993, or the Strauss Ball in 2005, or the promised land of 700? World Cup Win in 99, and missing out in 2003 because of his own neglect…