Shane Warne death: SCG attendant Bobby Barter reflects on life and times of Aussie spin legend

Bobby Barter was the unofficial SCG room attendant tasked with looking after Australia’s Test cricketers. If working for Shane Warne was always unique, then his farewell was something special.

Shortly before walking onto the SCG for his final Test innings, Shane Warne was struggling with a knot in his pants.

Not just any knot, either.

“Nah, dirty great one,” laughs Bobby Barter, the man who devoted 10 years to washing Warne’s clothes, tossing him Red Bulls, even delivering that latest copy of New Idea.

Officially, Barter was SCG room attendant for the Australian cricket team.

Yet unofficially?

Warnie calls it quits at the SCG in 2007.

Well, when Adam Gilchrist asked once about wearing his favoured Test batting pads into an ODI the next day, it was Barter who not only rushed off to try and pick Australian green paint from a Mitre 10 colour wheel, but then worked through the night to paint five coats onto said pads in his Peakhurst garage.

“Came up beautiful, too,” he recalls. “Watching next day, I couldn’t believe one of Australia’s greatest cricketers was walking to the crease in a pair of pads I’d painted.

“It was great. Right up until Gilly got bowled first ball.”

For Haydos, meanwhile, Barter always knew to have Coke on ice waiting at a tea.

While for Simon Katich, only water.

Same as when ‘Kat’ whacked that historic 306 in Sheffield Shield – the first triple century by a New South Welshman since Bradman -- it was Barter who not only arrived before dawn next morning to gather wicket scrapings as a memento, but even bottled them for the batsman.

Truly, we could go on for days.

Like when Ricky Ponting left that famed Monkeygate inquiry after play in 2008, only to find Barter still hanging about the sheds at 3am to drive him home.

Or when Brett Lee once forgot to bring cufflinks for an after-match function, and Barter disappeared out to loan a pair -- family heirlooms no less -- from some straggler at the Members bar.

All of which says plenty about this knockabout Sydneysider who, first time he entered the hallowed SCG sheds, was in 1959 – as a third grade St George winger whose melon required 12 stitches.

While only Dragons first graders were permitted inside the famed locker in its heyday – “the rest of us changed under the old Sheridan stand” – a groggy Barter was carted in, bleeding everywhere, during a thirds game against South Sydney.

“Got knocked out twice that day,” the old Saint grins.

“I had black eyes, head cut, pins and needles … I remember Dragons winger Eddie Lumsden saying it was like I’d been hit by a truck”.

Yet still, Barter remembers that knot on Warnie’s strides looking uglier.

A moment, you should know, which came on day two of his famed 2007 Ashes farewell.

“Even tried using a needle to loosen it,” the old rouseabout says, smile widening at the memory of Australia’s greatest spinner, a man who twisted some of the world’s greatest batsmen into knots, having done the very same to his own Test pants.

Which isn’t how most of us remember that final Warne appearance.

But, geez, can’t you just picture it?

“And I’ve got no idea how he did it,” Barter continues of a mystery to rival The Gatting Ball.

Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne after their final Tests at the SCG.

“Earlier, Shane had been sat waiting to bat, swinging back and forth on a chair.

“I remember he shouted ‘Bobby, can you get me a Red Bull?’

“So I went and grabbed one from the fridge.

“Then soon after, ‘hey Bobby, can I grab another can?’.

“So of course I got another one.”

At which point, Warne then disappeared for a slash.

“But when he came back, oh mate,” Barter cackles. “He’s got this knot -- or three knots -- out about six inches out from where you would normally tie your pants.

“So they couldn’t be tightened. And likely weren’t going to stay up.

“He asked me to help but we just couldn’t get it loosened.

Warnie just couldn’t get that knot sorted.

“So eventually he’s said ‘Bobby, cut the chord’.

“I said, ‘Warnie, we can’t do that. Your pants will fall down out in the middle’ ...”

But this, remember, was one of Wisden’s five Cricketers of the Century.

“So Shane just rolled his pants over a couple of times,” Barter says.

“Then put on a short-sleeve jumper. Reckoned that would keep them up.

“Said ‘it’ll be right’ ...”

Which, of course, it was.

With Warne, when finally called to the crease, not only blasting his first ball to the boundary, or second ball over it, but eventually compiling 71 runs -- the highest Australian score that match – with the type of confidence that even saw him sledging during drinks.

“Apparently when England won the (2005) Ashes, they all got an MBE from the Queen,” Barter explains.

Everyone wanted a piece of Warnie, including David Hasselhoff.

“Anyway, one of the blokes playing -- I can’t remember his name – but he’d got a gong even as 12th man. So Shane was asking him about that …”

Which is why the green, drink bottle Warne held in that moment, Barter still has it.

Same deal a collection of old six stitchers, white floppy hat, even a chair cushion on which Warne sat that day waiting to bat, swinging back and forth.

Why?

Even the bloke himself isn’t sure.

Still, he has them.

Just as who knows how many Aussie kids sported that Nike Swoosh earring.

Or rocked blond tips.

Leggies?

Warnie with Gilly, Punter, Binga and Haydos at the end of the 2007 Ashes Test.

Yep, everyone tried to rip them.

After all, if a fat kid from Melbourne could do it while existing on gaspers and VB cans, why not the rest of us?

Sure, Warnie was a rockstar,

But the one we all would’ve been.

That fella who took actress Liz Hurley to Ascot Races -- then wrapped his mouth around a pint glass.

A cricketer who played over 400 Tests, ODIS and T20 matches -- and in a swirl all flippers, sliders, zooters, Gatting ball, Mystery ball, 1994 hat-trick, stump dance at Trent Bridge, the ‘05 Ashes, John the bookie, even mum’s diuretics -- and still at the end, somehow, tied even his own pants into knots.

“Which is why millions of people know Warnie,” Barter says, “without ever having met him”.

At which point, the old SCG attendant looks across the room to a framed front page of The Daily Telegraph which, from that same ’07 Test series, and with Warne on the cusp of 700 Test wickets, is signed ‘Bobby, you’re a star’.

“And who knows how many items he signed like that?” Barter shrugs. “But when Warnie signed it for me, it felt unique. Special.”

Which truly, goes to heart of Shane Keith Warne.

To his magic.

Why, too, the tributes are flowing now from not only the likes of Mick Jagger, Ed Sheeran and Elton John, but that everyman who cheered Warnie while wearing a sombrero, shook hands at some function, or simply stopped mowing the backyard to watch him bowl.

Australians who, continually, were drawn into his orbit.

Even if only to cut a knot from his last set of creams.

Now 83, Barter is still living these days in the same southern Sydney home he built 60 years ago.

With his wife of 59 years, Claudette, too.

Back in his heyday, Barter loved KB.

Warnie clutching his inseparable objects, two mobile phones and a packet of cigarettes.

Smoked Benson & Hedges from 16 to his 40s.

He was a park cricketer.

A Dragons lower grader.

A fella who long before working behind that famed green door of the SCG, assisted at nondescript Sydney club ovals right across the city.

Which probably explains why he so quickly picked up that Warne never wanted to use the SCG lockers like the rest of his Australian team-mates.

So instead, and in the same dressing room corner before every SCG Test, Barter would set the spinner up with a lounge chair. Then in front of that, a small table.

“Where every morning,” he says, “Warnie would arrive and drop his smokes, aspros and phone.

“Then, he’d park himself in that corner, sat back in the lounge.

“Never too raucous when I think about it. But always with someone looking to chat, especially after games.

“Geez, I can still see him there now.”

Originally published as Shane Warne death: SCG attendant Bobby Barter reflects on life and times of Aussie spin legend