Shane Warne recalls Dean Jones’ brutal sledge in Sri Lanka
Shane Warne infamously had a horrific start to his Test career, and Dean Jones couldn’t resist giving the youngster an insulting sledge.
Cricket legend Shane Warne has recalled the brutal sledge he copped from the late Dean Jones during the third match of his Test career.
A fellow Victorian, Jones was already an established international cricketer when Warne made his first class debut in the 1990/91 season as a 21-year-old prodigy.
The tweaker was rushed into the Australian squad the very next season, and was selected to make his Test debut against India at the SCG in January 1992.
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Warne’s international debut infamously did not go to plan. Ravi Shastri took a liking to the leggie’s inconsistent bowling, smashing him to all corners of the SCG.
Shastri was eventually dismissed by Warne after accumulating 206 runs in just under 10 hours at the crease, and Jones took the catch on the boundary.
“In that first Test I was getting smacked around the park, Ravi Shastri skies one to deep cover and Deano takes the catch,” Warne wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
“He comes into the huddle and says, ‘Well done champ’. He used to call everyone champ. He said, ‘You’ve got your first one, they can’t take that away from you’.”
Warne was unable to snare a wicket in his second Test match — also against India at Adelaide Oval — and his career bowling average briefly stood at 228.
Thankfully, Warne was selected for Australia’s Test tour to Sri Lanka later that year — but the horror streak continued in the opening match of the series, with the leggie conceding another 107 wicketless runs in the first innings.
Warne’s luck turned in the second innings at Colombo which he removed tailender Pramodya Wickramasinghe to secure his second Test dismissal.
“We went to Sri Lanka in 1992, and I was getting smacked all over the park again, and I got my second Test wicket,” Warne recalled.
“(Jones) came in the huddle and said, ‘Well done champ, you now average 435 runs per wicket, well done’.”
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Unbeknown to Jones, he would play his final Test match on that Sri Lanka tour. Despite averaging 55.20 with the bat in the three-match series, the 31-year-old controversially lost his spot in the team for uncapped West Australian Damien Martyn.
Although Jones’ career in the whites was cut short, he is regarded as a pioneer in the one-day formats.
When he retired from international cricket, only one batsman boasted more ODI runs than Jones at better average — Sir Vivian Richards.
“So many of my teammates, more the later generation, had posters of Deano on their wall. They all wanted to be like him,” Warne wrote.
“The posters on my wall didn’t involve cricket, but in the backyard or down the beach a few summers before I joined Victoria, I was pretending to be Deano like everyone. He was the most flamboyant player there was, a character.
“(Jones) was an innovator, a maverick, he revolutionised the way the pyjama game was played, the one-day game modernised because of him.”
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