Delighted to see Gideon Haigh back in the Guardian. Superb writer.
Last throw for Warne to make the difference
[i]By its usual standards, the Warnosphere has been fairly tranquil of late, but then Shane Warne’s standards are a scale uniquely calibrated.
Gideon Haigh[/i]
“Aussie spin star in sledging shock.” The sight of such recent headlines in the sports pages of Australian newspapers would have filled the average reader with a familiar foreboding. Ho-hum. Warnie in the soup again. At least there is nothing inflatable involved this time.
The maledictor sin-binned for a fortnight, it turned out, was Stuart MacGill, usually known for the size of his vocabulary not its saltiness. And on reflection there was never need to read further. Warne sledging scarcely shocks his mother nowadays, and Warne in any headline is always just “Warne”. Yet somehow, especially with an Ashes series in the offing, that alone is enough to conjure up myriad images.
By its usual standards, in fact, the Warnosphere has been fairly tranquil of late: no slappers, no smoking, no mystery balls and so far only one first-class wicket, in Western Australia’s Shaun Marsh - a piquant one for anoraks, given that Warne had also dismissed Shaun’s father, the Test batsman Geoff, in December 1992. He is an analogue kind of guy and his three-month-old blog features just 10 posts and five comments. But, of course, Warne’s usual standards are a scale uniquely calibrated. Even while doing not much he has been the subject of a scathing biography, responded with a counter-punching autobiography, dissed his coach, damned the media and danced around the subject of reconciliation with his wife. Each, it turns out, has revealed a little of Warne’s stature in the Australian sporting landscape.
The biography, Paul Barry’s much-hyped Spun Out, proved to be a publishing doosra, stalling at 13,000 sales after Father’s Day, then unexpectedly coming back the other way, en route to the remainder table; it was outperformed over the same period by the paperback of Steve Waugh’s autobiography, which has already sold 180,000 hardbacks. Depending on the reader, Barry’s airy assertion that Warne had slept with a thousand women either taxed taste or stretched credulity. The title might well have been Warne Out, for the response suggests a public largely inured to the subject’s escapades, happy enough for him to do as he pleases, providing he remains off the streets and frightens no horses.
Warne’s My Illustrated Career, in its own autohagiographical way, is actually a far more illuminating book, unconsciously amusing in places when Warne feels his age (“I am one of the older guys and there are times when I feel it”) and plays the role of elder statesman (Kevin Pietersen has “a great future as long as he doesn’t get carried away with off-field stuff and keeps his feet on the ground”). It is even rather touching and candid about the effect of his estrangement from his wife, Simone, during last year’s Ashes: "I put on a brave face in public but when my hotel-room door was shut I wasn’t too good. I got upset looking at photos of my kids, just wishing they were still around.
“Michael Clarke was a big help. I felt a bit for ‘Pup’ as I offloaded all my troubles on to him, at a time in his life when he was trying to establish himself in the side and had his own issues, but he is my closest friend and mateship is the most important thing in life and he was there for me, and I won’t forget that, I really appreciated it. He spent hours with me, listening when I wanted to get something off my chest. I remember one night later in the tour when the two of us sat in the corner of a bar both pouring our hearts out. After a few pints and a few more vodka Red Bulls I think I said I loved him. Jeez we were poleaxed that night.”
Yet it must say something about Warne that in a time of strife he relied for solace on an unmarried 24-year-old making his first Ashes tour rather than an older and more experienced peer. Warne might well have “felt a bit” for Clarke; he shifted a heavy burden on to pretty callow shoulders. Was it that sympathy elsewhere was lacking? Was it that others might have judged him? The passage is an exhibit in the case that Warne has become a state within the state of this Australian XI, the high-risk subsidiary of a blue-chip parent company.
Another exhibit is the only pictorial appearance in the book of John Buchanan, who uncannily resembles Julius Kelp in Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor. As the bespectacled Buchanan wields a camcorder for no apparent reason, Warne looks wearily away, sighing of his “nerdy looking” coach in the caption: “Perhaps he’s had an idea for the next team meeting.” Warne’s view of Buchanan’s shortcomings are scarcely ambiguous - even less so than after he sulked through “boot camp”. Of last year’s Ashes Warne grumbles: “I am not sure we did a lot wrong but I would say that behind the scenes we had a lot of team meetings which I’m not sure were always very productive. I’m not saying that’s the reason but it was just talking around in circles rather than getting out and doing something.” The longer-term reminiscences aren’t over-fond either: “I remember at his first team meeting he said he was there to improve us as people first and cricketers second but I am not sure the responsibility of a coach extends as far as life skills.”
Warne can probably sit out Buchanan, whose tenure as coach is due to expire after next year’s World Cup, hovering like a recalcitrant schoolboy at the back of the classroom. But much will hinge on the choice of Buchanan’s successor, whom Warne has publicly opined should be a Test player of distinction, and probably look a little more like Wally Lewis than Jerry.
The imponderable in those considerations is Warne’s personal future, now delicately poised, with him and Simone maintaining a loose orbit round one another and their children but passionately protective of their privacy. Warne was incensed when a female television journalist accosted him after his dismissal at the Waca Ground to ask him to comment on rumours they had reconciled: a brave move without a helmet. A more “up close and personal” cricket coverage has been mooted for this summer’s Ashes, with the revival of the old boundary-edge interview. Warne may be tempted to issue press releases instead.
What keeps Warne going? This summer it is probable that he will pass 1,000 international wickets: he has 978, composed of 685 from 140 Tests and 293 from 194 limited-overs games. But his great rival for bowling’s blue riband, Muttiah Muralitharan, already has 1,082, and with his edge in years will probably leave Warne’s records in his wake in due course. The Australian captaincy, too, is now, almost certainly, permanently out of reach.
The Ashes, then, looms disproportionately large in Warne’s plans - for, after that, perhaps even he does not know. Cricket has been a faithful recourse for Warne; when all else has gone pear-shaped, the game has always been there for him. But Warne, who grew up in the bosom of a loving home and family, might well be prepared to make sacrifices for one of his own. Perhaps, in due course, Warne will have a shock for us that is genuine and meaningful.