My father grew up in the 1960s which means, for him, his childhood and adolescence are tinged with the memories of The Beatles, the space race and moon landing and the Manchester United team of Bobby Charlton, George Best and Denis Law. It meant, too, that were you to ask him to name a great Australian leg spin bowler, he’d have naturally said Richie Benaud. I grew up in the 1990s. Although nowhere near as good as The Beatles, it meant that my youth was soundtracked by, among others, Oasis; the space race had been replaced with the information superhighway and the world wide web; Manchester United were winning leagues with teams based around Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona and Paul Scholes. This meant that if you were to ask me to name a great Australian leg spin bowler, I’d naturally and enthusiastically say Shane Warne. Warne took over 700 wickets in his Test career and was part of the Australian side that were invincible for most of the 1990s and 2000s.
Let me tell you two stories. The first takes place on a day in June in 1993, where I am watching the 1st Test Match between England and Australia in that summer’s Ashes series. This is the first Ashes series in my living memory; this is the first Australian team I’ve ever seen play. It’s a story that’s been told a thousand times since from a thousand different angles – it’s even been retold in song – but I can tell you that I was there: at least, I saw it, live. I saw that moment when Shane Warne, a young, bleached haired slip of a lad, strolled up to the wicket and bowled to England’s Mike Gatting. I was watching when his first ball landed way outside leg stump and spun so sharply that it beat Gatting’s ample size and inadequate defences to clip the off stump. I saw it and knew something special had just happened.
Twelve years later. 2005. The summer that witnessed certainly the best Ashes series of all time, if not the greatest Test series of all time. (Fans of India may suggest some of their titanic battles with the Australians at the same time match up. Then there’s the series played between the West Indies and Australia in the early 1990s to consider as well.) England had won the Ashes 2-1 and, quite remarkably, the week after England had held Australia to that scintillating draw at the Oval, Shane Warne was playing for Hampshire against Glamorgan in Cardiff. Which is where my sister met him in Chiquito’s restaurant one evening. She was out celebrating her friend’s birthday when a very pleasant, very polite Australian man – clearly someone a guest at the table had recognised from somewhere – came over to say hello, wish the birthday girl a happy birthday and then return to his meal. But my sister had no idea who this man was. She had heard his name out of the corner of her ear and mentioned it to me in passing as she returned to my parents’ house that evening. ‘I met an Australian man this evening,’ she said. ‘I think he was a cricketer. He had nice hair and nice clothes. Shane Wall – does that ring a bell?’
Shane Wall, indeed. The next day I took my father to Sophia Gardens and, despite not being able to meeting Warne in person as my sister had done, we did get to see the great man in action. There were a number of quality players in action – Simon Katich, a fellow Australian Test player; John Crawley; Shaun Udal; Robert Croft – but Warne stole the show. He took 4-50 and a superb catch at slip. My Dad and I watched him go through his paces from behind the bowler’s arm and side on; it was like watching a master craftsman at work.
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