Giving thanks to Warney

As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, families across the country gather together and sit down at the dinner table to carve up a giant turkey served with gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, cornbread and all sorts of other fixings. It’s the one day of the year where no one has to apologize for stuffing their faces non-stop before passing out on the couch with a tryptophan-induced food coma.

One of the other Thanksgiving traditions is watching football. Growing up, I used to go with my father and brothers to the local high school football game in the morning and freeze my butt off while sitting on the steel bleachers. We’d come home in time to turn on the TV to watch the Dallas Cowboys or the Detroit Lions play an annual Turkey Day match-up in the NFL.

But now a new Thanksgiving tradition exists that takes place once every four years. While my mom was in the middle of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey, I asked her what time we planned to eat. “I dunno,” she said.

“Well, all I can say is, we better be finished by seven,” I responded, “because that’s when the Ashes come on.”

I never used to make such demands to get away from spending time with my family and relatives on a major holiday. But this is what my frame of thinking has been reduced to thanks to Shane Warne.

It’s a little over five years ago now that I landed in Australia, ostensibly to study for a semester at Macquarie University, but instead, I received a much bigger education from the cricket universe. During the day, I went to history classes taught by Professor Michael Roberts, who holds a PhD from Oxford and is one of the finest teachers I’ve ever had. At night, I sat in front of the TV screen and tuned into SBS for cricket classes taught by spin doctor S. K. Warne, the finest teacher I’ve ever had.

There are many people to thank and reasons to explain why I was able to catch on to cricket as quickly as I did despite never having grown up around the game in America. But at the top of the list, I must give thanks to Warney. Indian fans might claim that Tendulkar is God, but he has the charisma of a monk. On the other hand, Warney oozed Hollywood star appeal every moment he was on the pitch. When that magic was added to tricks he could do with the ball in his hand, I was completely drawn into his spell as were many of my American friends, who made their way into Unit 3 at the MU Village, and saw him perform.

Sometime after the end of the second Test at Edgbaston in 2005, my MU Village neighbours Paul Connaker and Evan Foley walked to a local Rebel Sport shop in Sydney’s northern suburbs to buy a start-up cricket kit with a bat, ball and stumps. We all started playing makeshift cricket games in the park across the street and even though we were into our 20s, Paulie and I argued like little kids over which one of us got to be Warney.

I stayed up every night for the rest of that series, clinging onto the edge of my seat, riveted to the Ashes drama all because of Warney. If I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, it was because I was jumping up and down, high-fiving Paulie when Warney was giving it his all on the fourth day at Trent Bridge. Or it was because we had fallen to the ground in disbelief when Warney dropped Pietersen on the fifth day at The Oval.

So when I came back to America in 2006, the days and months crept along until it was time for the Ashes to begin again in November. I was at my university in Nebraska on the day before Thanksgiving. The plan for that evening was to go to the campus turkey feast organised for all the out of town students stuck on campus before watching Warney start the process of reclaiming the urn.

But in the afternoon, I was out on a golf course with some friends from my university’s athletic department when my cell phone started ringing. I looked at the name on the screen and it was Paul Connaker. We probably hadn’t been in contact for months, but I didn’t hesitate to stop my game of golf to answer the phone. Paulie and me started screaming and shouting into the phone about how Warney was going to take all 100 wickets for Australia. If Saturday Night Live wanted to create a 21st century version of the show’s “Da Bears Super Fans/Ditka” skit, Warney would have been the perfect choice.

Instead of wearing khakis and a button-down dress-shirt to that Thanksgiving dinner in 2006, I arrived at the campus feast in my cricket whites. This was met with sniggers and prolonged stares, as if I was some obsessed fan getting ready for Comic-Con by dressing up in a Marvel superhero costume. I was just channelling my inner Shane Warne. I gave thanks to Warney that night and he helped reclaim the Ashes urn for Australia. He didn’t take 100 wickets, but 23 in the 2006-07 series were more than enough to make me happy.

Four years later, Thanksgiving and the Ashes coincide again with Australia looking to reclaim the urn once more, but Warney is no longer donning the whites for Australia. Xavier Doherty is the ninth Test spinner Australia has used since he retired and the Australian side as a whole is battling against age, injury and form. It’s hard not to think that when Warney retired from Test cricket, the spirit of Australia’s team left with him.

However, on this Thanksgiving, I will continue to give thanks to Warney. He is the one that filled me with a spirit for cricket and he’s the reason why the turkey dinner better be done by seven.