Shane Keith Warne, the legend of Australian spin bowling, was enigmatic as a player. Ball in the hands of a true artist, a fierce competitor on the cricket field and little else than that. The leg-spinner went from career to career and controversies followed him. Warne’s rise to superstardom began with his first delivery in the Ashes, cricket’s oldest rivalry. Playing in his Test match against England, Warne clean bowled veteran batsman Mike Gatting with a hitherto unseen ball on a cricket field. It was 4 June 1993, the second day of the first Ashes Test at Old Trafford, Manchester, when Warne managed to bring a ball to pitch outside leg stump, and a vicious turn on Cherry went past Gatting’s bat and over the top. Slipped off-stump. That delivery has since become known as the “Ball of the Century”.
Warne ended the match with 8 wickets to claim the “Man of the Match” award. He would end the series as the highest wicket-taker with 34 scalps and it began his rise to stardom as Australia bulldozed England in cricket’s oldest rivalry for more than a decade.
With Warne’s rise to stardom, Australia replaced the West Indies as the dominant force in world cricket. Warne and Australia’s dominance reached their peak in the 1999 ICC World Cup as they took 4 wickets each in the semi-finals and final to guide the Steve Waugh-led side to Australia’s second world title.
But his life off the field has also been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. From being accused of disclosing pitch details to a bookie, to being absent at the 2003 ICC World Cup after testing positive for a banned substance, to multiple reports of his equestrian lifestyle, Warne was the favorite child of controversy.
His on-field relations with contemporaries such as Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist were also not the best to say the least, something that eventually cost him the top position in Australian cricket.
But the Victorians were the greatest match winners of their generation with the ball. For him to finish 708 Test wickets and 293 ODI wickets at a time when the Australian cricket team was full of wicket-taking fast bowlers like Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes, Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie and those who followed him, is a testament to his greatness. To.
He showed his leadership credentials in the Indian Premier League, guiding Rajasthan Royals’ rank outsiders to the title in the inaugural season in 2008, and remained a major attraction among the media and paparazzi until the final day.
His media commitments often showed the game’s amusing and astute reader that he was a man who didn’t shy away from calling a spade a spade.
publicized
‘King of Spin’ may have passed, but it will continue to shine
Shane Warne, Rest in Peace!
Topics mentioned in this article