Shane Warne

The ball is his weapon and the pitch his battlefield, legends have fallen and records have been shattered when this man has held the cherry. The masses have roared for him and posters of “You have been Warned” have been put up whenever he is on the field. One of the 5 Wisden cricketers of the century, sharing the same laurels as Sir Donald Bradman and the best leg spinner the game has ever come up with, say hello to Shane Keith Warne.

Coming from the small town of Ferntree Gully in Victoria, Warne started of playing for Victoria at the age of 21. As he played on for his team,the selectors found something different in this lad, who was able to turn the ball by a mile and that too consistently. Before he even knew it, he was picked into the Australian side and was made to play his first match against India at the Sydney Test in 1992. Coming into the international level was quite a shock to him although he had been expecting it for quite some time. His nervousness could be seen on the field during the first of his matches but once he had the batsmen bamboozled by his flight and bounce, he soon gained his confidence. It was in the Ashes of 1993 when Warne had created history with an inimitable ball that rocketed him to stardom. Mike Gatting, one of the greatest players of spin that England had ever produced was facing Warne. Knowing that Warne was new to the game he felt that it would be a piece of cake carving him to the boundary. As Warne bowled his first ball to Gatting, it bounced outside leg stump and cuffed the off stump. Gatting was left standing in shock and horror as he just realized what had happened.

He had just faced the ball of the century.

Warne had become the most destructive bowler there on. He revived the art of leg spin, which was once thought to be extinct and is now pre-eminent in a game so transformed that we sometimes wonder where the next champion fast bowlers will come from. His life was an award ceremony in which he bagged titles such as Wisden Cricketer of the Year 1994,One-Day International Player of the Year 2000,Test Player of the Year 2006. Adding to these, he became the first person to take 700 test wickets after a close race between his Sri Lankan counterpart, Muttiah Muralitharan, was also adjudged the Man of The Match in a World Cup final. Has always been an entertainer when he bats and might be the only person to swat as many runs as he has without making a hundred. His highest being 99 against New Zealand.

Bringing out variations in his deliveries, he is able to change his rhythm, line and length whenever he wishes to and has dangerous deliveries to choose from such as the zooter, slider, toppie and back-spinner, one that drifted in, one that sloped out, and another that didn’t budge. But the one that was the most horrifying was his wrong’un which when was bowled right, could get any batsman in a fix. In recent times, he has worked on his flipper and used was able to implement it beautifully against the Pommies in the Ashes. But whenever he bowled, he relied on his two oldest friends: excruciating accuracy and an exquisite leg-break, except that he controlled the degree of spin – and mixed it – at will.

Warne has always been in the headlines, but now always for his cricketing feats. He was making news for the wrong reasons. For a long while there were women, then a bookmaker, then diet pills which eventually made him miss out the World Cup in 2003, then more women. His life had always been a mixture of a soap opera and a fairy tale. And like every fairy tale, he too had a happy ending. After the entire drama was over, he decided to come back to what he loved, his game of cricket.

His final series was the Ashes in 2006-07 and he couldn’t have asked for a better finish than a complete whitewash which he contributed to immensely with his bag of tricks. Retired now, he is finally able to put his feet up in the air and live a peaceful life with his wife and kids.