Shane Warne

Lore & Background

Warne made 145 Test appearances, taking 708 wickets, and set the record for the most wickets taken by any bowler in Test cricket, a record he held until 2007. He was a useful lower-order batsman who scored more than 3,000 Test runs, with a highest score of 99. Warne was a member of the Australian team that won the 1999 Cricket World Cup. He retired from international cricket at the end of Australia's 2006–07 Ashes series victory over England. Warne published his autobiography, No Spin, in 2018. Warne revolutionised cricket thinking with his mastery of leg spin, then regarded as a dying art. After retirement, he regularly worked as a cricket commentator and for charities and endorsed commercial products. During his career, Warne was involved in off-field scandals including a ban from cricket for testing positive for a prohibited substance, a colourful personal life and interactions with gambling figures. On 4 March 2022, Warne died of a heart attack at the age of 52, while on holiday in Thailand. After his death, many tributes and memorials were made to Warne, both in his home city of Melbourne and elsewhere in the cricketing world. Warne was posthumously appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for his service to cricket.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights hummed. The Delhi crowd had been chanting for twenty minutes, a low, rolling thunder that never quite broke into a wave. Then the roar changed pitch, became a single sustained note, as the figure in the red cap appeared at the top of the pitch. He bounced the ball once, twice. The crowd exhaled. He ran in, and the leg-break left his fingers with a sound like a small crack of thunder. The batsman played. The ball turned. The stumps scattered. And the stadium, for one suspended moment, forgot to breathe.

Reader's Guide

Warne's first representative honours came in the 1983–84 season when he represented University of Melbourne Cricket Club in the Victorian Cricket Association's under-16 Dowling Shield competition. He bowled a mixture of leg-spin and off-spin, and was a handy lower-order batsman. The following season, Warne joined St Kilda Cricket Club. He started in the lower elevens and, over a number of seasons, progressed to the first eleven. During the cricket off-season in 1987, Warne played five games of Australian rules football for St Kilda Football Club's under-19s team. In 1988, Warne again played for the St Kilda Football Club's under-19 team before being promoted to the reserves team, where he played a single game. The same year, he also kicked 7 goals in the under-19s in St Kilda's round 10 game. Following the 1988 Victorian Football League season, St Kilda delisted Warne and he began to focus solely on cricket. In 1989, Warne had a six-month stint in Bristol, playing for the Imperial Cricket Club in the Western League, where he took 49 wickets at 15.22. In 1990, Warne was chosen to train at the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide. Warne struggled with the discipline at the academy and left following disagreements with management. In 1991, Warne joined Accrington Cricket Club of the Lancashire League as their professional player for that year's cricket season. After initially struggling in English conditions, he had a good season as a bowler, taking 73 wickets at 15.4 runs each but scored only 329 runs at an average of 15. The committee at Accrington decided not to re-engage Warne for the 1992 season because they expected their professional to contribute as both a batsman and bowler. Warne was recalled to the Australian Cricket Academy in 1992, where he honed his leg spin abilities under former Australian Test spinner Terry Jenner. Warne was selected for the Australia B team, which toured Zimbabwe in September 1991. In the second tour match at Harare Sports Club, Warne recorded his first first-class score of five wickets or more in an innings when he took 7/49 in the second innings, helping Australia B to a nine-wicket win. In December 1991, upon returning to Australia, Warne took 3/14 and 4/42 for Australia A against a touring West Indian team. Warne made his first-class cricket debut on 15 February 1991, taking 0/61 and 1/41 for Victoria against Western Aus

Did You Know?

• Warne was born in Upper Ferntree Gully, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, on 13 September 1969.
• According to his autobiography, when Warne was in kindergarten, another boy jumped on his back and broke both his legs.
• Warne played five games of Australian rules football for St Kilda Football Club's under-19s team in 1987.
• Warne's first ball of the 1993 Ashes series, at Old Trafford, was called the 'Ball of the Century'.
• Warne died of a heart attack on 4 March 2022 at the age of 52 while on holiday in Thailand.