Warne was a true genius of the sport

People like Shane Warne thumb their nose at fate, kick dirt in the faces of the sporting gods and behave as if immortal. His death still doesn’t seem real.

Shane Warne with TV interviewer Michael Parkinson at Foxtel Studios in Sydney in 2007.

I remember watching the so-called “Ball of the Century” at Old Trafford in 1993 – the ball bowled by Shane Warne that bamboozled Mike Gatting. Warne looked like he had just sloped off the beach after an early morning surf to blow away the cobwebs from a night on the tiles. Yet he announced his arrival with a ball that defied belief and the laws of physics.

It would have been easy to see Warne as simply the modern version of Keith Miller – they both ooze star quality and they are both glamorous with a talent to entertain, which is rare and priceless. They both enjoyed a night out and had equal appeal, for different reasons, to either sex although we probably knew more than we really needed to about Shane’s nocturnal adventures.

But Shane also had traces of Bradman about him. Not just in the way he was an era-defining talent but also in the way he played his cricket, which was uncompromising, deadly serious with the smile on his face more of a predator showing his teeth than a friendly invitation.

Warne, like other geniuses I have had the pleasure to witness, doesn’t need scriptwriters like Cardus to capture the public’s imagination. They write their own in the annals of whatever sport they grace. They create moments that are unforgettable and the arc of their lives and their careers, the falls from grace and journeys to redemption, are followed as avidly as the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster. They sometimes say that the brightest stars burn themselves out quicker than their less luminous neighbours, that tilting at too many unreachable windmills, pushing the boundaries of what a human can achieve in the physical sphere, makes it inevitable we will lose them before their time.

Parkinson, left, interviews Shane Warne and Ricky Ponting at Wrest Point Casino in 2011.

People like Shane thumb their nose at fate, kick dirt in the faces of the sporting gods, behave as if immortal. Shane’s death still doesn’t seem real. Perhaps those closest to him saw the signs, but those of us who marvelled at him from afar greeted the news of his death with a sharp intake of disbelieving breath. In the months prior to the publication of this book I went to a charity event that was dedicated to the memory of Shane. His close friend and the talented broadcaster Mark Nicholas delivered a heartfelt, thoughtful and well-delivered tribute to him, but it was evident that he was still struggling to come to terms with the loss. At the same event his eldest child Brooke was asked to also say a few words, and as she stood and addressed the audience, there was the face of her father looking out at us and it was still unbelievable that he was gone.

I interviewed Shane for Australian television directly after he had retired from cricket. He didn’t back away from any issue and dealt with the questions about his triumphs and disasters, the laurels and lurid headlines in an open and straightforward manner without resorting to tearful recriminations or sympathetic spin. I asked him at the end to sum up what he thought he had achieved. His answer was an understated assessment of his legacy. “I think there are a lot of kids who would like to be like me, and hopefully they won’t make the same mistakes I made.”

Parkinson found Warne delightful.

My Sporting Life, by Michael Parkinson.

His real legacy was shown in the state funeral he was rightly given by the country of his birth and the replaying, in documentaries and other tributes, of his outrageous feats of skill driven by a burning self-belief that meant nothing was a lost cause, no obstacle too high to overcome. As a result, he left us moments that are seared into the mind’s eye that will never be forgotten. As for the mistakes, well he’s not alone in the pantheon of true greats who might give St Peter pause at the Pearly Gates. Of course, the “rules” of how the vast majority of us run our lives should and do apply to them as does their responsibility for their actions and the influence it may have on their young fans and on the game they adorn. But it is also true that we are prepared to forgive them far more easily than other mere mortals. In fact, in an odd way it gives us comfort that they are at least in one aspect of themselves not completely in control and are as flawed as the rest of us.

We like our sporting heroes as the Greeks liked their gods: all-powerful but full of the best and worst of human desire. They exist, from the moment they first bowl, kick or hit a ball in a rarefied atmosphere of supreme co-ordination and complete self-belief. The air up there is different and gives them a very different perspective on the world below. It is no wonder they sometimes fly too close to the sun. In the words of Ian Healy, who had the bird’s-eye view of the best bowler I have ever seen: Well bowled Shane!

Extract from My Sporting Life by Michael Parkinson, published by Hodder & Stoughton, out now.