Shane Warne: from sex scandals to cricketing glory and fatherhood

Shane, a new documentary about the great leg spinner Shane Warne reveals a complex character caught between his family and the international spotlight

Shane Warne after taking his 600th Test wicket, England v Australia, 3rd Test, Old Trafford, Aug 05. (Photo by Patrick Eagar/Popperfoto via Getty Images)

Shane (M)

Madman on Demand, Amazon Prime, Microsoft Movies, Fetch

4.5 stars

In the just-concluded Ashes series, Shane Warne, in the commentary box, said every cricket team needed 11 thinkers. While the final decision rests with the captain, he or she should have 10 on-field advisers.

That thinking rips straight to the middle stump of Shane, an absorbing Australian documentary about the record-breaking Australian spin bowler.

This 96-minute film, directed by David Alrich, Jon Carey and Jackie Munro, is a psychological drama from the first ball.

After that, it’s a family drama and then a sports movie.

“Warne was a psychologist as well as a leg-spinner,’’ says Ian Chappell, one of several former national cricket captains interviewed.

Andrew Strauss, wearing the English cap, agrees. “It was just mind-blowing. You face him for a session and you are utterly exhausted.’’

He thinks Warne’s greatness as a sportsman is not due to his DNA or natural talent but to his uncompromising mental toughness.

And the man himself, now 52, admits he was “nasty” on the field and overdid the sledging. “I wouldn’t have liked to play against me. One of my strengths … is that I can intimidate people.”

That uncompromising place “upstairs”, as Warne calls it, came with significant costs.

“Rightly or wrongly, cricket was my No.1 priority,’’ he says. “It doesn’t mean I didn’t value my family, but they were second.”

His ex-wife, Simone Callahan, and their three now-adult children are interviewed, as are Warne’s parents and his brother Jason. While they love him, and defend him, it’s clear he caused a lot of emotional hurt.

The challenge for the filmmakers is to avoid hagiography. Warne, after all, took 708 Test wickets, second only to the Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, who retired in 2010 with 800.

They succeed, thanks in no small part to Warne’s self-analysis. At the same time, they fall short of delivering the biopic equivalent of the Gatting ball.

Warne’s philandering is noted only briefly, as the cause of his marriage collapse. His multiple sexting episodes are not mentioned and nor, bizarrely, is his relationship with English model and actor Elizabeth Hurley. We see her beside him in some file footage, but her name is not spoken.

That world-famous Gatting ball, delivered to English batsman Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in the first Test of the 1993 Ashes series, is discussed in depth.

It’s the most crickety part of this film and it is fascinating, as is the discussion about the physical demands of bowling leg spin. That ball was Warne’s first delivery in an Ashes series. He made his Test debut the previous year, in Sydney against India, and was knocked all over the park.

He says he sat in his hotel room the night before, stressed out and smoked so much it “looked like a Cheech & Chong movie”. Gatting, almost 30 years later, is able to laugh about his freakish dismissal now. “It was just surreal. I just thought, ‘my goodness’.’’

If the young Shane Warne, in love with AFL football, had been able to jump higher and kick straighter, the Gatting ball would not have spun into existence. He made the U19s for St Kilda but, as he admits, “was not good enough to play at the top level”.

He considered tennis and accounting but decided on cricket. What followed until his retirement in 2013 is full of highs and lows, but mainly highs.

Warne’s 12-month ban for taking a banned diuretic is covered, as is his involvement with teammate Mark Waugh in the “bookie scandal”.

But when he was up – and he was for a long time, including his Ted Lasso moment in the Indian Premier League – then every kid playing backyard cricket wanted to be Warney. As fast bowler Merv Hughes, who was on that 1993 Ashes tour, puts it: “I got my hand up. I wanted to be Shane Warne.”

There’s a funny moment where Warne and Sachin Tendulkar remember a dinner at the Indian captain’s house. Off the pitch, there are interviews with musicians Chris Martin and Ed Sheeran, who are friends of Warne’s.

The musos may not be specialists, but they have a feel for what makes him tick. He’s someone, the Coldplay frontman muses, who says “I don’t give a f--k, but gives a f--k more than anyone else”. The question is: How does he walk that line?

When the cricket bible Wisden announced its five Cricketers of the Century in 2000, No.1 was, as expected, another Australian: Sir Donald Bradman. Then came Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Jack Hobbs, Shane Warne and Sir Viv Richards.

That’s an elite list but four of them have something Mr Warne does not.

Towards the end he admits he’s imperfect, has lots of faults and “there are lots of things I ain’t good at, which annoys me”. That last bit sums him up.

Scream

In cinemas

3.5 stars

In the gripping opening sequence of Scream, Tara (Jenna Ortega) is in a text chat with her friend Amber (Mikey Madison). A moment comes when it seems it’s not Amber on the other end of the line but someone with a knife. He sounds male but this is a Scream movie, so don’t count on it.

He, she or they asks Tara to name her favourite scary movie. She chooses The Babadook, the 2014 directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent, because it’s “elevated horror”.

The person with the knife disagrees and the next two hours are carved into a less elevated – yet highly entertaining – horror movie.

As my teen co-viewer noted, it’s important that a slasher movie includes a psycho slashing people.

That observation goes to the sharp edge of this clever film, the first of the Scream series not directed by Wes Craven, who died in 2015.

As fans will know, it is set in the fictional American town of Woodsboro, a place where every now and then someone – or more than one person – puts on a ghost face mask and goes on a murder spree.

This fifth instalment, directed by Matt Bettinelli and Tyler Gillett, is a slasher film that knows it’s part of a famous slasher franchise and has a lot of fun with that.

As such it continues Craven’s approach.

One of the best-known lines from the series comes from the 1996 original. “No, please don’t kill me Mr Ghostface,’’ says Tatum (Rose McGowan). “I want to be in the sequel!”

That the film is called Scream, rather than Scream 5, continues the meta joke that does elevate this horror movie and its predecessors. One of the new characters, Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), explains that some movies are requels: part reboot, part sequel.

So this is a sequel to Scream 4 for the fans and a Scream reboot for a new generation of viewers. As one character notes, almost philosophically, “Ghostface is back’’.

A bunch of new characters, such as Tara, Amber, Mindy, Wes (Dylan Minnette), Sam (Melissa Barrera) and her boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid), are his/her/their targets.

They are helped out by returning characters such as TV reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox, and there’s another humorous bit about Friends), sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and self-help author Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).

Without revealing too much, major characters do meet the wrong end of the knife.

When the identity – and motivation – of Ghostface is revealed, it takes the inside joke to a place that is very funny and, when you think about it, and read up on real-life Scream copycats, very scary.