Shane Warne: A cricketing genius who lived a life of ‘no regrets’

As it turned out, Warne, who was just 52, had declared he was on a serious health kick, trying to lose weight and get in condition. Previously, he had even managed to turn weight loss into a scandal, when he failed a drugs test at the 2003 Cricket World Cup in South Africa and was sent home. He was ridiculed for blaming his mother for recommending the banned diuretic.

To say Warne was no stranger to controversy is as banal as observing that he was a superlative cricketer. One of five Wisden Cricketers of the [20th] Century, cricket fans pore over his bowling record with the same forensic eye as the paparazzi tracked his carousing.

It was Warne who delivered the “ball of the century” in 1993, perhaps the most famous dismissal in modern cricket, to a perplexed English captain, Mike Gatting. It was a piece of sporting sorcery that will never be forgotten. These contrasting images lead us to ask who is Shane Warne, and why does he matter so much to so many?

WARNIE: THE SOAP OPERA

There are few sportspeople interesting enough to have an entire musical devoted to them, but Eddie Perfect found plenty of material for his 2008 production Shane Warne: The Musical. Its subject may be much admired by cricket followers around the world, but he is also well known to a much wider audience precisely because he has generated so much tabloid fare.

Warne was radically different from other Australian cricket heroes like Sir Don Bradman and Richie Benaud.

Shane Warne also made the move to television commentary, but whereas Benaud offered dignified consideration, Warne was animated and opinionated. Restraint was never part of Warne’s armoury, although his successful career as a professional poker player and the subtlety of his bowling were evidence of a shrewd, calculating mind behind the brash exterior.

He was both product and producer of the sporting celebrity that now moves effortlessly across the cultural landscape. He unblushingly endorsed hair loss treatment.

Warne’s doomed engagement to British film star Liz Hurley was a classic case of a relationship conducted in the media spotlight.

The arrival of social media, and the pocket cameras always on hand to upload “evidence” of a transgression, was crucial in shaping the world’s knowledge of Warne the man when he was not performing astonishing feats on the cricket field.

He is, therefore, much closer to the postmodern cohort embodied by “bad as I wannabe” US basketballer Dennis Rodman than traditional Australian sporting larrikins.

(The writer is professor emeritus, Western Sydney University)