Simon Hughes: Throwback with the modern touch (13 May 1997)

Tuesday 13 May 1997

Throwback with the modern touch

By Simon Hughes

THE marauding Dennis Lillee, Australia`s last sporting champion, had one moustache, one macho attitude, day or night. Shane Warne, his nineties successor, a beach boy leg spinner with a leisurely stroll to the stumps, has four earrings.

A gold stud for the serious business of cricket, the No 23 - a legacy of his favourite player - for watching an Aussie Rules match, a tiny Nike symbol for promotional work, and a big hooped number for boarding days and boozing nights. He is an adaptable artiste capable of switching moods as the situation demands, driven and focused one minute, cheerful and disarming the next.

With his surfie good looks and sporting prowess, Warne is a modern, accessible Australian hero who could have just walked off the set of Neighbours. He symbolises skill, success, vitality. He does not burst blood vessels to achieve his goals but torments opponents with a flick of the wrist and a flashing smile. He moves mountains with twirling fingers rather than toiling elbows.

No other bowler in history has had quite his range, and yet no other bowler in history has had his control. The difficulty of the leg spinner`s art usually results in a liberal supply of deliveries which sit up and beg to be spanked to the boundary. Yet over his career Warne has conceded only fractionally above two runs an over. His web is unbelievably sticky.

He is a brilliant confidence-trickster not afraid to try new little swindles - the `pick pocket` delivery, for instance, which darts out of the rough to bowl the batsman behind his legs. Seeing a novice facing him is like watching a new born foal on roller skates. But as a spinner with a fast bowler`s mentality, he really comes into his own when an opponent tries to take the initiative.

"Batsmen have to take huge risks to collar him," says his support act, the wicketkeeper Ian Healy. "If someone manages to hit him for 4, 4, 4, he`ll rub his hands and smirk and say `Come on mate why don`t you hit a proper one?` And the batsmen`s thinking `Christ, this bloke`s still going and he`s still good. What have I gotta do to shut him up?` Or he`ll do something weird in his run-up or pull a silly face before he bowls - the fish bowl`s his favourite." Healy pulls a face like an All Black doing the Haka. "That`s when he`s on fire."

Warne and his blonde wife Simone recently moved into a large mock Victorian house overlooking Melbourne`s Brighton beach. Brightly painted bathing huts sit in a higgledy- piggledy line below their pad, beside which are children playing in the sand and several leathery old women. Gulls swoop on discarded ice cream wrappers and tankers chug past on the horizon. The scene is delightfully old fashioned in keeping with Warne`s profession, a throwback to an earlier era.

He was brought up in the vicinity but as a sporty 12- year-old he, like most lads, idolised Lillee`s long, menacing run and scorching pace. However, his school coach Ron Cantlon, a decent club leg spinner, noticed a rare ability to give the ball a big tweak. "The champion West Indians had a historical weakness against spin," Cantlon said, "and I told him to keep at it because in 10 years time they`d be scouring the country for a leggie." It turned out to be a most prescient observation.

Terry Jenner is a hefty larrikin who bowled leg spin for Australia in the seventies, but then drifted out of the game and into jail for embezzlement. He had a good cricket brain, though, and after serving his two-year term was enticed to the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide to teach young spinners a few con tricks. Warne was there on a scholarship, Jenner was captivated by his ability and they enjoyed mutual recognition. Both were extroverts who fell foul of authority and could put on weight just by looking at a bag of chips.

Warne absorbed every morcel of advice Jenner had to offer - tactics, disguises, variations, refined use of the flipper - and still meets him for a quick check up. He also sought guidance from the doyen, Richie Benaud. "I told him to develop a big leg break he could deliver at will," Benaud said. "I thought it would take four years but he did it in two."

The Australians reaped the benefit of their vision, having spied Warne`s potential and fast tracked him into the team after only four appearances for Victoria, and the public wallowed in it. His arrival on the international scene was a breath of fresh air in the wilting draught of fast bowling and in 1993 sent shock waves through English cricket.

His popularity is all the greater because he is such a normal, good bloke. He wears jeans and `Save Water, Drink Beer` T-shirts, likes burgers and `spag boll`. He cannot cook but regularly takes his wife and parents out for a feed. He loves lying in and going to the beach and reckons he has watched the Shawshank Redemption about 25 times. He has got a major weakness for roulette.

Can he expose the English fallibility to wrist spin again this summer and leave another trail of destruction? "He has the potential to, definitely," Healy says, smirking. He has looked careworn, however, and confessed in South Africa that he was finding the schedule and expectation a bit too much. "There is that much pressure I don`t know if I can stay at the right mental level for the next four to five years."

So, maybe after all that has happened, he won`t be particularly motivated for the Ashes? Warne shakes his head. "Look," he says, "no matter how bad or good England are playing, or how well Australia are doing, it`s still the same because every player lives for Australia v England. And it`s been drummed into you since the age of five that if you`re Australian you`ve just got to beat the Poms." England Hung, Warne and Slaughtered?

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)