My Shane Warne Memories
I’ve talked before on this blog about why I love cricket, but I didn’t say what caused me to fall in love with the sport. That answer is obvious to anybody who is my age, because as a 10 year old kid I witnessed the greatest test series ever to be played. It was a series about entertainers, from the all round efforts of Freddie Flintoff, to the swashbuckling debut heroics with the bat from Kevin Pietersen, but the main star was the Australian, Shane Keith Warne.
England won the 2005 Ashes 2–1, which was the first time they had won the Ashes in 18 years. Warne had been playing in the series for the last 12 years, and was one of the major reasons for England’s struggles in this time. And despite not being on the winning side, Shane Warne had a series that few have ever matched. He took 40 wickets in total, the second most ever in a 5 test Ashes series after Jim Laker in 1956 (Laker managed 19 of those in one match) and at times it felt like it was England v Shane Warne.
However the stats from that series alone don’t do Warne justice. He was involved in so many moments in that series, and seemed to always be there. He was an entertainer, a rock star, when he had the ball in his hand you couldn’t look away. Whilst most bowlers, even spinners, would run or at least jog before they delivered the ball, he would walk up to the mark, gently but menacingly, bowl the ball slowly through the air, making it go exactly where he wanted it to, before it would venomously dip in the air, hit the pitch and turn ferociously. If you want to see an example of one such delivery from that series, then take a look at this (the first minute of the video).
My strongest memory from that series was the final day of the fifth test match, September 12th 2005. Newcomer Kevin Pietersen had saved the match for England, and when Australia finally dismissed him, Warne (after earlier dropping him) ran up to him, shook his hand and congratulated him on a terrific innings. You knew how gutted Warne was that this innings had caused Australia to lose the series, yet he was a great sportsman first and foremost. After Pietersen was then out, Warne took the remaining two wickets of England’s innings with some of his classic leg spinning deliveries. He then walked off the field to a standing ovation from the English crowd, who knew that at the age 35 this was the last time they’d see him on English soil, and how lucky they were to witness this once in a lifetime great.
That summer and each subsequent one, my brother and I would spend long summer days and evenings batting and bowling against each other. When I was bowling, I would try and copy Warne’s menacing walk and try to spin the ball really hard, just like he did. We used this orange ball, similar to a windball but a bit harder that would give it sharper turn and bounce. I’d also watch countless YouTube videos of how to bowl the googly, the top spinner, the flipper, the slider, the zooter, and a million other types of deliveries that he bowled and then force my brother outside so that I could practice them against him.
Warne made spin bowling cool, but he also made it accessible. Whilst you knew you needed to be blessed with natural hand and eye coordination to be a batsman or pure power to be a fast bowler, Warne made you think that you didn’t need any of these things, just hard work. In actual fact, if you’re trying to bowl a ball from the back of your hand at a slow speed that the batsman can easily see, it’s pretty difficult to do it well. Trust me, I’ve been trying for 17 years.
Warnie, you inspired a generation. RIP.
