Warne - freakish

[Donny]

Year in, year out Warne's a freak

By Ron Reed - Fox


THERE'S just no stopping Shane Warne, who should have his own episode of Survivor.

A serious shoulder injury might have slowed him down for a while, as did a broken finger.

He was dropped once, but not for long.

Various lurid scandals have scuppered his dreams of ever becoming the Test captain, but he has bowled on through them all.

And now, even a year's ban for a drug infraction appears to have been just another blip on his astonishing performance radar.

His talent is prodigious but his resilience is a highly impressive part of the package, too.

Since his suspension expired on February 10, he has taken just a month to force his way back into the Test team and just this one Test to take the nine wickets he needed for the once-unthinkable milestone, as well as reclaiming his old role as the team's No. 1 matchwinner.

It seems laughable now, all that speculation about whether he would ever really make it back at all.

It hasn't been by accident, either, with a dedicated fitness regime ensuring that he was perfectly prepared for the resumption.

Loud will be the applause today for the finest statistical feat by an Australian cricketer since Bradman retired with his immortal average of 99.94, and that includes Matty Hayden's world record 380 last year.

So it should be, too - but there is little real point in salivating over the numbers as they stand. As one has been piled upon another for year after year, they have all been celebrated, analysed and applauded ad infinitum.

The real fascination now lies in the question of not what has been done but what is left to do? The most obvious short answer is to overhaul Walsh's towering benchmark of 519, now little more than a formality.

With two Tests left in the current series, to be played on spin-friendly tracks, it could even happen in this series.

If not, it will be later this year, for certain.

And then?

Warne is 34 but - as he keeps reminding us - fitter than ever, and refreshed by his enforced break.

He is also locked into an intriguing duel with his Sri lankan counterpart Muthiah Muralidaran, which will keep his competitive juices on the boil just a little more than might otherwise be the case.

And for the first time in his colourful life, he can feel his mortality - in a sporting sense - tapping him on the shoulder.

And as much as he insists that he does not play the game for statistical reasons, his place in history will be important to him when its all over.

So there is plenty of incentive to press on into the cricket equivalent of the outer universe, 600 wickets or beyond.

That's another 20 or so Test matches, or another couple of years.

It's just another incredible stat that he could be in that territory already, given that his various travails have meant that he has missed 28 of the Tests Australia have played since his debut against India in 1991-92.That translates to at least another 100 scalps.

Whatever Warne does, Murali will probably end up out in front given that he is four years younger, bowls almost non-stop in every match and seems to be still improving his formidable repertoire.

Watching the pair display their very different wares over the past few days has been extremely absorbing entertainment and with the battle due to be resumed on Australian soil in October, we can look forward to plenty more of it.

Walsh was a terrific cricketer in his own way but there wasn't a lot of colour and very little controversy - apart, perhaps, from a dubiously-delivered bouncer - in his method and style.

His 500-plus epic had a very different feel to it than those of the two spin kings.

And so, the Shane Warne story reaches the end of yet another fact-is-stranger-than-fiction chapter, with the denouement of the plot still impossible to predict.

[Donny]

Walsh backs Warne to go on and on

From correspondents in Kingston, Jamaica - Fox


COURTNEY Walsh, who holds the world record for Test match wickets, today backed Shane Warne to blaze a trail towards 700 Test victims after the Australian joined him as only the second bowler to get past the magical 500 mark.

"It's a great effort by Shane and a marvellous milestone," said West Indian great Walsh who finished his career on 519 Test wickets.

Warne now stands on 501 wickets, the first spinner to reach the landmark, after taking match figures of 10-159 as Australia beat Sri Lanka by 197 runs in the first Test in Galle last night.

"Shane knows how to stay motivated and he is a great competitor," Walsh said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he goes all the way to 600 and then 700 wickets as he knows that there's a little fellow called Murali chasing him all the way."

Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan stands on 496 wickets, third in the all-time list.

Both Warne and Muralitharan are set for a thrilling duel over the next three months for the honour of being first past Walsh's record.

There are two more Tests between Australia and Sri Lanka before both sides head for tours of Zimbabwe in May.

Warne was playing in his first Test since serving a year-long ban for failing a doping test.

[Donny]

Good on you, son

Fox

IT was those closest to Shane Warne who were most in awe of what he achieved yesterday.

Warne's parents Keith and Brigitte, in Sri Lanka for all three Tests, could scarcely believe he could return with a 10-wicket Test haul to bankroll an extraordinary victory.

"To come back like that after 15 months was unbelievable . . . I just have to stop pinching myself," Keith said last night.

"It is great to be here. He worked as hard as he possibly could to prepare himself to give himself every chance."

Warne's parents have stuck by him during his controversial career, including the past year when he was banned for taking an illegal diet tablet he said was given to him by his mother.

"We are a pretty close family. We stick by each other. We all make mistakes and we hope to move on and be better people for it," Keith said.

Keith said he first saw Shane roll out a leg-spinner at age 13, but never envisaged he would become the first Australian to take 500 Test wickets.

"He has always been good at any sport he played. We watched him do well at football, cricket and tennis. We just watched him improve himself all the time. He just always kept taking the next step and kept going," he said. "But you just wouldn't contemplate him taking 500 wickets."

[Donny]

A star without a peer

By Robert Craddock - Fox


IF there is one simply way of illustrating Shane Warne's greatness as a bowler it is by looking at the thousands of boys he inspired and what happened to them.

The numbers he drew to leg-spin bowling in Australia alone ranks in the tens of thousands.

And those good enough to follow his path to glory all the way? At last count . . . zero.

As his coach Terry Jenner said 12 years ago: "He'll inspire every second kid on the block to bowl leg-spin, but don't think you'll get more Test leg-spinners.

"Most of them will finish in second and third grade or sub-districts.

"The trade is just that hard. He is a one-off."

And so it has proved.

As ambitious as they are, none of the thousands of boys who copied Warne were in the same hemisphere as him.

In 1996 Warne marketed a spin bowlers' kit for emerging slow men, which included balls with imprints of where his fingers were placed to deliver different balls.

Initial hopes were to sell 10,000 but it sold five times as many. What happened to those 50,000 wannabes?

In 1997 an Australian newspaper took a photo of the young leg-spinner at an Australian under-19 carnival. Almost every member of the troup looked like Warne clones with their ear-rings, blond hair or both.

Where are they now?

As Jenner said, the trade Warne makes look easy is devilishly hard.

Australia has to look no further than the Galle Test for confirmation of Warne's greatness.

He had not bowled a ball in Test cricket for 14 months yet within the first hour of his comeback Test it was obvious Ricky Ponting had earmarked him as his go-to man.

When Warne first cracked the Test scene in 1991 the thought of a leg-spinner taking 500 Test wickets was silly. Of cricket's top 25 Test wicket-takers only two - Warne and Anil Kumble - are leg-spinners.

When Warne started, leg-spinners were regarded as the game's most condition-sensitive creatures who needed a wearing wicket, a defensive field, a patient captain, a dry ball and a lot of luck to pay their way. Then he turned the world upside-down by proving he needed none of the above to succeed.

Australia is famed for producing great leg-spinners. Yet when he walked on to the Galle International Stadium yesterday Warne had taken twice as many wickets as Australia's next most successful leg-spinner, Richie Benaud, who took 248.

Statistics tell us he is not the same bowler he was because his blocks of 100 wickets are slowing.

No Test cricketer in history has bowled more deliveries.

Few have been more brutally over-bowled.

As a man he is a fusion of contrasting qualities.

As confident as you like with a ball in his hand - yet surprisingly insecure about his lot.

A guilt-edged star born for the limelight - yet often yearning the quiet life.

A ruthless tormentor of opponents he does not like, but a kind-hearted companion of those he does.

It is a unique package - Australia has seen nothing like him before and, in all likelihood, will never do so again.

[Donny]

Tale of two spinners

By Ricky Ponting

SHANE WARNE and Stuart MacGill may be two of the finest leg-spinners Australia has produced, but that's about where the similarities end.

They are different in many ways as bowlers and as people.

They have contrasting philosophies. Warney is a lot more conscious of field placings, whereas Stuie believes his job is just to get wickets.

It doesn't matter how many runs he goes for as long as he walks off at the end of the day with three, four or five scalps to his name.

Stu will simply ask for a player to be moved to a certain spot and then run in and bowl the best wicket-taking ball he can.

Warney likes to explain in detail how he wants his field set up for each batsman and why.

I might have a five-second chat with Stuie before he bowls an over. With Warney it could be a minute or two.

You can make out a little about their personalities by the way they bowl.

Warney is a lot more outgoing with the way he talks and acts around the dressing room.

He likes the group environment and atmosphere. That brings out the best in him, whereas Stuie keeps to himself a fair bit and interacts more one-on-one than in a group situation.

I've never seen anyone read as many books as he does during a cricket tour.

If we're batting he'll pay a bit of attention to the cricket but he'll often be sitting there reading his book, something that is not one of Warney's favourite pastimes.

Stuie's really well prepared with all his gear. He's always got his little sweat towels. His whites are always folded and his boots are well looked after.

Warney's over in the corner with his gear all over the place. Jocks and odd socks, sweat bands and gloves and things everywhere.

They get on really well together now, as we have seen on this tour, but I think their relationship was a little uncomfortable at the start.

It was almost like having another wicketkeeper in the side. We were used to having only one leg-spinner and when there's two who are very good sometimes it can feel that maybe they are stepping on each other's toes.

They were keen to show each other how good they were.

Their relationship is now chalk and cheese to when they started together almost six years ago.

They have great records and they don't need to prove anything to anyone.

They're not putting any pressure on themselves to be better than the other; it's just a matter of doing their jobs for the team, and they've done it well.

This was only the seventh time they have played a Test together and there has always been a lot of speculation about whether both should play in the same side.

I think it worked well in the first Test and the way Stuie bowled as the game went on was a bonus for us. Whether they line up together again today as a pairing will depend a lot on how the wicket in Kandy comes up after recent rain.

Going into the first Test I didn't think MacGill was bowling as well as he could, but towards the end of their first innings I thought things came together for him.

I actually said to the guys at the end of day four that I thought he would be the one to get most of the wickets on the last day because of the way the wicket was playing.

I felt it was the guys who got a little more bounce out of the wicket who were probably going to do the most damage.

As it turned out, Warney just pipped him in the end. I think they did a good job in tandem.

But the way we play and the way cricket is played over here, it probably won't come to the stage where they'll bowl a lot together.

I found during the first Test that you can probably only afford to attack from one end at a time on these fast grounds and slow, low wickets.

You need someone at one end who can bowl reasonably tightly.

They're both very attacking bowlers and can go for a few runs, so you have to be careful in these conditions.

As it turned out I had the luxury of being able to bowl those guys in the second innings together after we'd taken some early wickets, when Sri Lanka making the runs was never going to be a factor in the game.

[Donny]

Our top gun spiked the Murali threat

By Robert Craddock - Fox


SHANE WARNE has done what history said would be impossible in his comeback series - match Muttiah Muralitharan in his own backyard.

Australia won the series primarily because Warne took the most potent force world cricket has known out of play.

Both men have taken 20 wickets in two Tests but Warne has conceded 115 fewer runs.

That was always going to spell an Australian victory. Sri Lanka may be a one-man band but Australia have more talent around their prime strike weapon.

It was a stunning performance because Muralitharan had everything going his way.

He was on home soil, Warne was away from home, Sri Lanka's batsmen knew the conditions well and Australia's batsmen were playing on their least liked surfaces.

In the eyes of Australian fans, beating Sri Lanka has never had the gloss of a series win over India or Pakistan but this was one of Australia's best efforts of recent times, a win for the ages featuring all the qualities Australians like to see from their side.

The Indian subcontinent has never been Australia's scene and probably never will be, and that's what made it so great.

Our batsmen are used to flat decks that don't turn - here they turned square. Our bowlers are used to the comfort of big grounds and soft outfields - here they played on postage stamps that ran like billiard tables.

Our captains are used to setting attacking fields with four and five men waiting like vultures. Yesterday Ricky Ponting opened proceedings by sending five men to the fence. It is a culture clash of the most major kind yet somehow Australia did it and their satisfaction must have been enormous.

Australia did it despite the fact their big gamble to play Andrew Symonds at No.6 did not pay the dividend expected.

Justin Langer has had to scrap hard for his runs and Stuart MacGill has at times been harshly treated.

But it seemed whenever Australia needed a hero, they could find one.

But they would never have won without Warne.

He seems a different man to the one banned for a year for taking a diuretic. When he walked into the dressing room after the win there was no razzle-dazzle. He sat quietly, looking out at the ground and was soon joined by Allan Border and Merv Hughes for a quiet beer.

There were fears he may have trouble settling into the Australian team after several players criticised him during his suspension.

But the players say he has gone quietly about his work and has proved, for all his indiscretions, that he is one of the greatest bowlers the game has known.

[Donny]

Warne quickens tempo

By Andrew Ramsey - Fox


IN the best physical shape of his career and bowling with an action rejuvenated by his unscheduled 12-month hiatus, Shane Warne is poised finally to secure his place as Test cricket's greatest bowler.

There is a growing chance the moment may arrive during Australia's third and final Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo this week. Warne needs nine wickets to surpass Courtney Walsh's record of 519, and the leg-spinner has snared 10 in each of his previous two Tests.

What is more certain is the 34-year-old Victorian will only hold the title in a caretaker capacity until Sri Lanka's enigmatic off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan - six wickets adrift and almost three years Warne's junior - overtakes him once and for all.

Although no-one doubts Murali will ultimately set a mark that stands for decades if not longer, events of recent weeks indicate Warne can more than match it with the rubber-wristed Sri Lankan over the next year or two.

The man who knows Warne's bowling better than most - former Test leg-spinner and Warne's long-time mentor, Terry Jenner - believes the regularly wayward genius is close to revisiting his vintage best.

Jenner said yesterday he was stunned and delighted with what he saw when he flicked on the television at his Adelaide home a fortnight ago and saw Warne bowling in a Test match for the first time in 15 months.

The trim physique coupled with a higher arm action and a conscious decision to bowl slower and with better loop led Jenner to imagine he was watching archival footage from around 1995 when Warne was in his pomp.

So heartened was Jenner by what he saw, he believes that by the middle of the year Warne will once again be ready to employ his most lethal delivery - the flipper or top-spinner - in the Test arena after an absence of several years.

"In that first Test at Galle, he bowled over the wicket and if I half closed my eyes, with his body shape and his action, it could have been that the clock had been turned back and he was bowling in the mid-90s," Jenner said.

"When he came on to bowl his alignment was fantastic, his shoulders were strong and he had that beautiful Warne curve again. And he was bowling at a speed whereby he could get the ball to spin.

"Over the last few years he had been really pushing himself and - even though he doesn't like to hear it - his arm was definitely getting lower, and he was working out other ways to get his wickets.

"There's no doubt what he was bowling a few years ago was showing wear and tear."

That was when Warne was armed with a full repertoire of deliveries which he could land at will. His 70 Test wickets in 1994 was streets ahead of that year's next best, South African Fanie de Villiers and Pakistan's Wasim Akram's 47 apiece.

Then the wear and tear on his body began to show. His most potent weapon - the flipper - put such a strain on his shoulder he was forced to shelve it in the interest of prolonging his career.

Operations to repair his shoulder, spinning finger and knee led to other subtle changes in his action.

To compensate, Warne began bowling faster and flatter, relying on a limited-overs strategy of quicker leg breaks followed by flat, straight ones in the hope they would pin uncertain batsmen in front of the stumps.

It was a strategy which worked so well against an inexperienced Pakistan line-up in 2002, he finished that three-Test series in Sri Lanka and Sharjah with a remarkable 27 wickets at 12.67.

But when he dislocated his right shoulder in a fielding mishap a year later, it was widely accepted Warne would never again recapture the magic he had weaved a decade earlier.

Suddenly, the apparent disaster of a 12-month drug ban has revealed a dazzling silver lining by allowing him time to rest his overworked body and space to refocus his mind on his remaining career aspirations.

Warne's first Test captain, Allan Border, who is the selector on duty in Sri Lanka, said Warne has "a new lease of life".

"In a perverse sort of way his 12 months out of the game has been a blessing," Border said.

"He is like a kid with a new toy. He keeps reinventing himself. Out of all the dramas that have happened, we are going to get a better person and cricketer - the whole package is going to be better.

"He had taken so many knocks around the head, some were self-inflicted and some were because of the fame and fortune angle as people highlight his discrepancies more than most."

If, as Warne has claimed, his life of recent years has resembled a soap opera, then the past few weeks represent a string of dream sequence episodes.

"I couldn't have asked for it to go any better, but I suppose it's a credit to me for working as hard as I have over the last six weeks on fitness," Warne said in the wake of his match-winning effort in Kandy on Saturday.

"To come and bowl the way I have, I'm very happy. I couldn't have bowled much better than I have in the last two Test matches."

In part, Warne has been a beneficiary of circumstances. Pitches specifically prepared to help Murali have played into his hands, and allowed him to bowl with less pace and more loop and spin.

And the fact Australia's batsmen have been dismissed for less than 250 when batting first in each of the opening Tests has helped. With smaller targets to defend, captain Ricky Ponting has regularly preferred the more economical Warne to the incumbent - but often more expensive - leg-spinner, Stuart MacGill.

But in addition to Warne's undisputed genius with the ball, Jenner believes the way Australia's most talked-about cricketer planned his comeback has much to do with the success he's reaped.

Apart from a short-lived stint as a net bowler for the Victorian squad last August, Warne did little bowling for much of his 12-month ban and preferred instead to work on reducing his waistline and his golf handicap.

It wasn't until December that he began bowling in earnest, a move designed to ensure his sense of frustration was limited and his appetite to return peaked in February when the drug ban expired.

"If he had started his program in August to come back in February, there's a good chance he may not have made it," Jenner said.

"If he was in the nets bowling brilliantly but still a long way from his comeback, then it would have been terribly frustrating.

"I think he deserves to be the number one bowler in the world at some stage in his career, even if it's only for a while."