Just how good is Shane Warne?
AS he stands ready to bowl, there is little indication of what is to come. There is no threat in his posture, no menace in his look. Thin lips are pressed in politeness, the eyes are narrow and unmoving, revealing nothing. There are no spinning acrobatics, no fuss or frolic, nothing to suggest even a remote resemblance to the great spin kings we have known. There he stands, just an innocuous chubby man twirling the ball from hand to hand, dutifully waiting his turn to bowl.
His action, too, is understated and unadorned. There are no grand gestures, none of the imposing flourish of an Abdul Qadir, the eye-bulging intensity of a Muralitharan, or the mystical charm of a Chandrasekhar. There are just a few short steps, a simple turning over of the arm, a twist of the wrist, and he’s done.
The first proper indication of leg-spin is that the ball comes out of the back of the hand. Then the spectacle begins. There is enough drift and flight to build a spinning career on that alone. Line and length are so deftly controlled, they might as well be called torture and tease. And then the turn, the essence of spin — it is so dramatic and prodigious that even well set batsmen boasting Test averages of over 50 will be humiliatingly bowled round their legs.
The follow-through is the final weapon. It comes last, but is no less potent than the rest. He will stand astride the bowling crease with his hands on his hips, or sometimes with one hand across the chest while the other braces his chin. The posture is brazenly confrontational, and the look — part menacing glare and part incredulous exclamation — is all arrogance and intimidation. “I can’t imagine how you got away but next delivery, you’re dead,” it seems to say.
How good is Shane Warne? You could say he is so good that he is too good. His success comes from an ability to keep carrying out the threat that he delivers at the end of each follow-through. He has done it over 700 times in Tests. It is a staggering number, nearly twice as many as the career Test hauls of bowling legends such as Dennis Lillee, Malcolm Marshall or Ian Botham.
Even though Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan, with a current haul of 674 Test wickets, will doubtless overtake him, an important statistic separates the two: Muralitharan has collected as many as 137 scalps against the likes of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, but in Warne’s case all but 17 of his wickets have come against authentic Test opponents.
Most amazing is what Warne has been able to do with his chosen genre. Wrist spin has been considered a difficult and trying art, but Warne has just exploded with it, extending the possibilities of the craft to unimaginable heights. He is the first bowler in history to demonstrate that spin bowling too can be a weapon of mass destruction, propelling his side to ultimate greatness alongside Don Bradman’s Australians and Clive Lloyd’s West Indians, neither of whom relied on spin.
The list of bowlers with 200 or more Test wickets is dominated by fast bowlers but the wrist-spinning Warne sits on top of them all. There are only 5 other wrist spinners in that group (Anil Kumble, Richie Benaud, Abdul Qadir, Bhagwan Chandrasekhar, and Clarie Grimmet), and Warne has a superior average, a better strike and (of course) far more wickets than any of them.
Shane Warne was born in Melbourne in 1969. Even though he grew up in the days of Lillee and Thomson, his first love wasn’t cricket. His earliest ambition had been to star in Australian Rules Football (a variant of Rugby), and he turned to leg-spin only as a second-choice. Once he began handling a cricket ball, however, he realized he could really spin it. It wasn’t something he had to learn or work hard at. Spinning the ball was an innate ability he had been gifted with.
Warne made his Test debut in January 1992, and about a year-and-a-half later he bowled a ball that, by his own admission, changed his life. It was Warne’s first ball in an Ashes Test match and it has since been enshrined in cricket lore as the “ball of the century.”
After pitching wide outside the leg stump, it fizzed across a fully stretched Mike Gatting to clip the off bail. You have to see it to believe it. Those who still haven’t can catch it on TV (a private sports channel keeps replaying it) or on internet video archives.
In late 1994, during an Australian tour to Pakistan, Warne made the natural pilgrimage to Lahore. Within minutes he was sitting on the floor in Abdul Qadir’s living room, throwing wrist spin to a legend who had preceded him. Warne asked Qadir to show him his googly and was duly obliged. Qadir asked to be shown Warne’s flipper, and expressed his admiration. One master acknowledging another, the experience may well have verged on the spiritual. Warne records it as one of the happiest memories of his life.
Shane Warne’s career is being described as one of the truly greatest, and no one will argue with that. He is due to retire shortly, at the end of the 5th Test match against England at Sydney. Even in Pakistan, fans are sad. This may seem surprising — after all, some of Pakistan’s worst defeats have been at his hands — but you have to admire a skilled adversary, and Warne is as skilled as they get.