Eddie McGuire: The Shane Warne I knew and how he helped make the Big Bash League a success
Shane Warne was a scallywag and a loveable rogue, but his care for people was a personal trait that rarely got the attention it deserved. Eddie McGuire reveals the other side of spin king.
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Let me set the scene.
Cricket Australia has decided to form a 20/20 competition they want to call “The Big Bash.” Cricket Victoria want to have a team play out of the MCG called “The Stars.”
The mission, to make the “Big Bash” a ‘sports entertainment” product that will pull in crowds, kids/families and $$$ to sustain the future of the game and maybe even be sold to overseas interests.
Thus the green colours and the star on the front of the original kit, the hope was a rich Pakistani businessman might be enticed on board.
The prevailing wisdom was to load up on middle of the road players who wouldn’t be picked for international duties to win the competition.
In other words try and make spectacular out of ordinary. Good luck.
If our mission was to fill a 100,000 capacity stadium and set the ratings alight we needed to be the Stars not the Spuds.
There was only one person in the world who could make it happen. Shane Keith Warne.
And so like so many captains before, as President of the Melbourne Stars, I turned to Warnie and as always he delivered.
Boy did he deliver.
Somehow we convinced Ian Chappell to join officialdom after he’d spent a lifetime railing against it, next we approached Sir Vivian Isaac Alexander Richards to be batting coach, Kevin Pietersen came along for the ride with Lasith Malinga as internationals alongside great local players while Shane threw himself into coaching, captaining, recruiting and playing.
The Melbourne Stars and the Big Bash exploded.
Warnie understood the show and the business.
But once he crossed the boundary rope it was on.
Who will forget his confrontation with Marlon Samuels, he was old and there for show apparently … Until it was game on.
And then that “other” ball when while miked up he took us into his mind as a player and tactician “I will slide one in there” and bang New Zealand champion Brendan McCallum was on his way and the country went wild.
In the stands is fiance Elizabeth Hurley, minding the kids, while Warnie went to work on his MCG. Sporting genius meets show business and entertainment.
You weren’t getting that from a 1/20 off four over bowler.
And the Big Bash went bang!
Shane was never given enough credit for his contribution to the Big Bash.
He was on a hiding to nothing.
The money wasn’t great by his standards, his shoulder was stiff and sore and really the headline people wanted to write was he was washed up and cannon fodder for a new generation of big hitters.
What I watched first hand was what we are all grieving today, a man of extraordinary enthusiasm, who could see the big picture, enjoyed the fun, used his talents and then parlayed all his magic into his team and the game of cricket itself.
I saw it at dinner, I saw it when he was having a “dart” outside the “G” in a commentary break, signing autographs on the fence, visiting hospitals, I saw it when he dined with Kerry Packer and Lloyd Williams, when songs were being dedicated to him by Elton John, when Mick Jagger of all people said they’d love to be him.
I saw it getting into a cab in New York City. The driver was from Bangladesh.
We started talking cricket. Warnie was in the Big Apple. The driver said he couldn’t believe he was in the same city as Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar at the same time.
Of course the veterans game of retired cricketing greats was sold out.
By the time we arrived at the hotel tickets for this humble, cricket loving cabbie were in his pocket courtesy of SK Warne.
The man cried.
When Warnie’s pride and joy, The Shane Warne Foundation, was wound up his last play was to renovate the home of Will Murray, a schoolboy football prodigy, who became a quadriplegic after diving off a pier down the bayside in Warnie's stomping ground.
It was only part of the millions of dollars he contributed to those in need. He donated his baggy green to bushfire victims.
The people of Galle in Sri Lanka never forget his contribution to the rebuild of their stadium and town after the tsunami.
The “Poker nights with Warnie,” net sessions with kids, phone calls of encouragement or condolence.
Even the arch enemy, the English cricket team, were the recipients of his largesse and compassion.
At the depths of their despair this past season Warnie organised through his great friend David Evans to host the entire team at Cathedral Lodge Golf Club in country Victoria.
After being in quarantine and then getting belted by the Aussies, Warnie organised for the entire team to have a round of golf and a big dinner to help his cricketing colleagues.
He knew what it was like to be the focus of vitriol. He knew that there was always another day. And now there’s not.
These are just a few tidbits of Warnie well after his career was over.
When he could have sat back and lived off his reputation.
But no he kept giving.
And that’s why it’s so fitting that the Great Southern Stand becomes the SK Warne stand.
His love of football as pertinent as his exploits as a cricketer.
But regardless of his lofty heights Warnie never forgot his supporters in Bay 13.
He might have been mixing with Royalty one moment but he was always the King for the person in the outer.
The difference was that when people sat in the “Great Southern Stand” dreaming of sporting super human scenarios they needed only look up to see the boy from Black Rock actually performing them for real.
Apart from the outpouring of grief today from around the world those closest to him rue the great times ahead that are no longer.
When Warnie was in town something was always on.
He didn’t commandeer a room like some big names, instead his beautiful manners were always on display, his charisma and sense of fun and humour and his infectious enthusiasm made people gravitate to him.
And he never forgot a name or if he really liked you he gave you one.
Like Lou Richards and Rex Hunt we was a chronic bestower of nicknames.
Yet despite having the Southern Stand of the MCG named after him, a statue out the front of the members (Warnie on both sides of the ground!) being named one of Wisden’s all time top five cricketers and fame and fortune all over the world those who knew him well regard him as a generous, kind and loving man, courageous in play and opinion, who despite many foibles and mishaps, was known to be a “Ripper bloke.”
His kids adored him as he did them.
The final stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” says
“if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!
You ate well from the smorgasbord of life but you replenished and gave more than you received. We’ll never forget you mate.
Vale Shane Keith Warne.
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