Shane Warne – a mixture of genius, artistry, and flamboyance

There are moments in sport, when a player, in whom nature has combined the right elements, produces an act that transcends the normal and enters the realm of the sublime, cathartic, and breathtaking. Long after the deed is done, we are left wondering how such a thing was even possible, were we deluded by a conjurer’s trick? a sleight of a hand or leg? or was it indeed real? We keep revisiting those magical moments of the game looking for a clue, an insight into the act. Like a great work of art, such transcendental moments remain fresh, challenging, and otherworldly, no matter how many years and decades pass by. Who can forget the beauty of Messi’s spectacular goal in a 2007 game, when he took control of the ball for just 10 seconds to cover 60 meters and make the goal in 13 deft touches? Can we forget the nimble drop shots of John Mcenroe in the 1984 french open from the baseline that would gently cross the net and die? leaving the opponent kicking dust and nothing more? And how can a cricket lover ever forget the ball that bamboozled Mike Gatting in the first test of the 1993 ashes series? Those few seconds, from the time the ball left Shane Warne’s fingers to the time when it clipped the top of the off-stump, will forever remain etched in sporting memory as one of the finest moments of leg-spin bowling, ever. For its sheer audacity, technique, beauty, and surprise, it is unsurpassed to this day. But the man who produced that magical moment, an eccentric, a playboy, a young man who never let go of his childlike qualities, died yesterday at fifty-two, in a villa in Thailand.

There was something about Shane Warne that attracted notice. From the time he entered the world stage of cricket in 1992, till the time he retired in 2007, everything he did, attracted attention. A typical Aussie male, with blonde hair, a warm smile, and a charismatic persona, he quickly became the poster boy of Aussie and world cricket. For serious cricket enthusiasts, It seemed a bit incongruous that nature chose to bequeath the complex art of leg-spin to such a frivolous youngster. He wasn’t by any means serious: he fooled around, he drank, he flirted with the opposite sex and with danger on a regular basis, he was never obsessed with fitness, he could be intimidating and nasty; and yet when he walked up to the pitch to bowl, he became possessed, a different man altogether. The languid few steps to the bowling crease, the gentle hop, the curl of the lips, the tongue nestled between the teeth, followed by the easy motion of the arm across the shoulder, belied the sublime craft, art, and technique that went into it. It was impossible to read Warne unless those batsmen had the talent to play spin. When Warne bowled, he made it look easy, as if leg-spin was as natural as the flowering of a rose. But what he did to the ball, at the very last moment, before it came out of his fingers, has flummoxed the best of batsmen. In the fifteen years of his career, very few have been able to dominate Warne’s bowling, and those who did were equally gifted cricketers in their own right. Except for a Tendulkar, a Sehwag, a Lara, and a few others, perhaps, nobody else could consistently understand the disguise, the guile of the master, and play him with confidence.

It is quite possible the golden ball that took Gatting’s wicket in the Ashes, spun much more than Warne intended. He knew that too and so did Gatting, but it takes away nothing from Shane’s art of bowling. Bowling well – spin or pace – is essentially about taking advantage of the conditions on the pitch, and few were better than Warne in that department of the game. When on a roll, Warne’s control over the flight and length was exemplary. He could consistently land the ball in the corridor of uncertainty for the batman, and before they could make up their minds to come forward, or take a step back to play, the ball would have landed, sizzled, spun off the surface, and headed viciously towards the stump like the uncoiling of a snake about to strike. There is no better experience in cricket than watching a flamboyant leg spinner at his best, and during the ’90s when Warne’s abilities were at his peak, it was worth watching every ball he bowled. So much variety, control, and cricketing insight went into each delivery. Nirmal Sekhar, the great sportswriter, for the Hindu newspaper captured Warne accurately when he wrote: “In cricket itself, among the bowlers, the relationship between the hand and the ball is the most intricate in the case of leg-spinners. And, no man who bowled with the back of his hand has ever managed to coax the leather sphere to cooperate and co-author such a dazzling repertoire.”

Yes, Warne’s life was studded with controversies and personal battles. He never captained the Aussie side, because his off-field behavior wasn’t befitting a captain of a national side. There were scandals that rocked his career, and even threatened to derail it completely. However, Warne came through all of it by being candid about his mistakes and involvement. In a world, where it is easy to dissimulate and extricate oneself from problems, Warne accepted his role and was willing to pay the price to get back to cricket and bowling – the only things he really loved and enjoyed. Even after his peak days were over in the late nineties, and the shoulder wasn’t cooperating, his passion never waned. He did well in the shorter version of the game – the T20s.

Fifty-two is not the age to die, and I am sure, Warne would have expected to live a few more years than that and enjoy the well-deserved fruits of his labor and genius. He wrote a nice Twitter eulogy to another Australian legend Rodney Marsh just a few hours before his own death. When I heard about Warne’s death in a hotel room, alone, I was reminded of Prakash Menon, one of the senior and charismatic leaders at NIIT, who died four years ago of a massive heart attack at a hotel room in China. One can only imagine, hypothesize that such deaths were painless and peaceful ( if such a thing is possible), we really don’t know. When one dies at home, under the glare of a hospital room, or in an ICU, with tubes floating in and out, we can at least brace ourselves for the end, but when one passes away in the darkness of a hotel room, all of a sudden, a lot of questions linger, and we are left with a quality of grief that cuts deeper. But that is the enigma! We don’t know what comes next.

Shane Warne’s cricketing statistics will live on, along with his personality. 708 wickets in 145 test matches, and 293 wickets from 194 one-day matches – is as good as it gets. But more than the numbers, it is the art of Warne that will linger long after the records have become secondary. A week ago, I finished reading Marcia Davenport’s splendid biography of Mozart. I was particularly captivated by one sentence towards the end of this sumptuous book. Davenport writes: ” The accident that Mozart happened also to be full of spontaneous melody, dramatic fire, tender humor, sophisticated grace, and profound emotion is a bonanza of Providence. Such an accident does not happen twice.”.

We could say the same about Shane Warne.

Bala