Shane Warne proved beyond doubt that spin bowling could be as effective as pace bowling

Fifteen years ago, leg-spin was thought to be a lost art. As teams followed the phenomenally successful West Indian battery of fast bowlers, traditionalists feared the guile and deceit of high-class spin bowling was gone from the game forever.

They found their saviour in the unlikely form of a 22-year-old from Victoria who burst into the cricketing scene in 1992 and has stayed there ever since. Rare accuracy and an ability to spin the ball quite prodigiously made Shane ‘Hollywood (nickname)’ Warne one of the greatest of all bowlers. His first ball in England -- spun past a bemused Mike Gatting from outside leg stump and clipping the off bail -- remains his most famous moment, but his career has had countless highlights.

Early in his career, he picked up wickets with a mystifying array of leg spinners, googlies, flippers and top spinners. Shane Warne became the first player in history to claim 700 Test victims. Warne entered his final home town Test before his retirement needing just one more wicket to reach the milestone and the majority of the 89,155 Boxing Day crowd were there to witness the moment. Tempting opener Andrew Strauss into driving off the front foot in his fourth over of the spell, Warne delivered a sharply-turning leg-break which spun into the stumps.

Until Shane Keith Warne emerged in the 1990s it seemed that leg-spin and googly bowling was an art that had become more or less confined to the Indian subcontinent. By the turn of the century he had been celebrated as possibly the greatest practitioner the game has ever seen and in the 137th edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack for the year 2000, he was named as one of the five cricketers of the century. He was the only current player on the list; the others being Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Jack Hobbs, Sir Garfield Sobers and Sir Vivian Richards. He is the only Wisden Cricketer of the century who has not been knighted.

Warne at first sight does not give the appearance of a world class athlete and has a tendency to become chubby since his teenage days when he was an all-rounder. However, when he got into the Victoria side, aged 21, he began working hard on his fitness, particularly after a stint at the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide, where he came under the tuition of the former Aussies Test spinner Terry Jenner.

His Test debut came in the third Test of the 1991-92 series against India at Sydney with Australia leading 2-0. It was an inauspicious beginning. Australia just avoided an innings defeat and Warne took one for 150 (a tired Shastri on 206) in 45 overs. He failed to take a wicket in the next Test. His tally for the two matches being one for 228.

Warne’s first big success came in Sri Lanka the following season when Sri Lanka needed only to score 181 in the fourth innings to win the first Test. Victory seemed assured until Warne came on and took the last three wickets without conceding a run for a 16-run win. Previously, his one Test wicket had cost 346 runs.

It was when recalled for the second Test against the West Indies starting in Melbourne on December 26, 1992 that Warne’s career took off. He spun Australia to victory as the West Indies collapsed against him on the last day. When he claimed seven wickets for 21 in the final spell. That summer he came to England and at Old Trafford bowled possibly the most famous ball in Test cricket, his first in a Test in England, an inswinging leg-break which pitched outside the leg stump of Mike Gatting and hit the off stump. He was thus the first of 448 bowlers to clean bowl an opponent with his first ball in Ashes Tests. Later, at Edgbaston, the England Skipper Graham Gooch was bowled round his legs by a prodigious leg break trying to pad away. Warne took a match-wining 34 wickets in the series and set the pattern for his career. In Melbourne in 1994-95 he took a hat-trick against England.

There have been several hiccups. In 1995 Warne and Mark Waugh were fined by the Australian Cricket Board for selling information to an Indian bookmaker. The board kept the incident secret and it only came to light during the huge match-fixing scandals that enveloped many countries some years later.

There was finger operation in 1996, which afterwards gave him pain in both finger and arm whenever he bowled his leg break and caused him to rethink his strategies a little. Then in 1998 he suffered a shoulder injury which meant that when the 1998-99 Ashes series started he was in the commentary box rather than on the field. His replacement leg breaker was Stuart MacGill and the two played together on Warne’s return in the fifth Test. MacGill had 12 for 107 in that match, Warne two for 110. MacGill was the leading taker of the series with 27 at 17.70. They both went on tour to the West Indies and played together in the first three Tests, but for the fourth, Warne, vice-captain and selector, was dropped, against his will. Australia won the match and the series was drawn 2-2. Warne was depressed after this and the relationship with his friend and Captain Steve Waugh was little strained, but back in England for the World Cup he regained his enthusiasm.

In the series in New Zealand which followed, Warne passed Dennis Lillee’s record of 355 Test wickets, becoming Australia’s leading wicket-taker. Another finger injury caused another period of rest but he was back on Australia’s losing tour to India in 2000-01 and then in 2001 he bagged his 400th Test wicket in the fifth Test at the Oval.

In February 2003, just prior to the start of the 2003 Cricket World Cup, Warne was sent home after a drug test during the one-day series in Australia earlier in the year returned a positive result for a banned diuretic.

WARNE'S MILESTONE VICTIMS 1st: Ravi Shastri (Ind), Sydney, 1992

100th: Brian McMillan (SA), Adelaide, 1994
200th: Chaminda Vaas (SL), Perth, 1995
300th: Jacques Kallis (SA), Sydney, 1998
400th: Alec Stewart (Eng), The Oval, 2001
500th: Hashan Tillakaratne (SL), Galle, 2004
600th: Marcus Trescothick (Eng), Old Trafford, 2005
700th: Andrew Strauss (Eng), Melbourne, 2006.