Warne’s life, and his sport, would never be the same again. Richardson looked down at the pitch with contempt. Only now did he have the balls to unleash it. As his brother told us, he had been practising it for years. But he knocked over the West Indies captain with a flipper. On day five of this Test, with his unbuttoned shirt, gold chains and broad-brimmed sunhat, he was in murderous touch.Īt that point, Warne had peroxide blond hair, lime zinc cream and a Test bowling average of 90. Some days, Warne would wake up certain that he would score a century. Thirty years ago, just after it had been constructed, Richie Richardson marvelled that the ground held more people than the population of his country (Antigua). The Great Southern Stand officially became the Shane Warne Stand. Before his final MCG Test, he said he was almost “turned on”. Some days, if he was fielding on the boundary or walking off after another haul, he’d look up at the locals like a big puppy. When the house was full and the occasion had weight his eyes would dance and his face would light up. This just wouldn’t have felt right at Melbourne’s St Paul’s Cathedral. He loved nothing more, as Gideon Haigh once wrote, than curling up in bed with a good phone. He whinged about the same things as us on Twitter. He never shied away from his fame or his mistakes. But he was never one of those superstars at arm’s length. Not many of us have a bowling alley in our house, date supermodels or are photographed wielding giant inflatable dildos. Some of his partners, as Clive James once said of Grace Kelly, were born with a silver dinner set in their mouth. His ordinariness, his impeccable manners and complete lack of pretence and malice were recurring themes all night. Underpinning all their tributes was an aching sense of loss. For all his travels, travails and trespasses, he was a wonderful father. He would stand on the sidelines at local netball games, snore on the couch, secure backstage passes, blare Bryan Adams and embarrass them on social media.Įveryone wanted a dad like Shane Warne. How does anybody top that?īut it was impossible to listen to Warne’s three children – Jackson, Brooke and Summer – and not feel a desperate sadness.
From Elton John to the United Nations from Kylie Minogue to Sachin Tendulkar.
There was a proper sense of who he was, the joy he brought and his prodigious talent and reach. There were tut-tutting tweets and tedious opinion pieces. In the weeks after his death, there had been a ghoulish fascination with his final hours and the repatriation of his body. There was no gothic splendour – just a cavernous, concrete colosseum. Instead of an archbishop, ceremonies were conducted by a TV personality. There was no Bach, no Yeats – just Williams and Sheeran. There were no political scores to settle. Memorial services such as this are often stuffy affairs.
0 kommentar(er)
