RIP Shane Warne. You were just about the most exciting cricketer there’s ever been

1. Wait, what? I thought this was going to be a Rod Marsh joke or something.

   Okay, well, that’s thrown me for the day.

   RIP Shane (and Rod)

2. My hero. As an 8-year-old kid, the Gatting ball was a big reason I fell in love with the game.

   1. A ball that said “anything could happen” so loudly you could still hear it a decade later.

      1. Great description of that ball.

         Thank you Shane Warne for just being brilliant forever.

3. Well bugger me. That came as quite a shock.

4. Normally when someone famous dies it’s a case of whatever and you turn the page. I’m actually upset by this. It really is no age. He managed to cram a few lifetimes into those years though…

   1. He added plenty of life to his years.

5. I guess his lifestyle for much of his career was, to put it mildly, not one your GP would recommend, but this is still a shock.

   From 1994 and That Ball, through that nervous fourth innings at Trent Bridge in 2005, all the way to his retirement, you can’t tell the story of the Ashes without a lot of mentions of Shane Warne, and I suspect that will be his lasting legacy, much more than his strange pronouncements (and strange pronunciations) in his post-playing days.

   1. Every team needs its heroes, but also a worthy and intimidating adversary. Warne was both of those things.

6. Maybe a good day to revisit this

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muc25lM_Y3I

   Love the song, except that Gatting wasn’t out for a duck…

7. Damn. No age to go at all

8. My brain’s still trying to figure out how to process this one. As far as big names of the era goes, Sachin’s the only one on par. Children growing up will now only hear about this almost mythical leg-spinner called ‘Warnie’, who could terrify Englishmen into submission with just a few slow paces…

9. When the world is going to hell in a hand basket, we rely on sports to provide us with moments of cheer. Not today. Not for the foreseeable future. This is too great a lacuna to fill.

10. I didn’t know.

    something from 2010 in my cricket folder:

    https://i.imgur.com/a4f5Tpu.png

11. What a strange day. Some thoughts and memories about both Marsh and Warne:

    https://ianlouisharris.com/2022/03/04/the-day-the-cricket-greats-died-rod-marsh-shane-warne-4-march-2022/

12. This one hurts. He singlehandedly made being a leggy a good thing, even if I had nowhere near his ability. Hadn’t got round to watching Shane on Amazon, which is now going to be somewhat bittersweet.

13. Been over a day now and I’m still really sad about this.

14. Though he had many other great performance but for me I will always remember his death bowling in 1996 world cup semi finals against West indies. That was the first time as a kid I realized that a great bowler is far valuable that a great batsman in cricket. For that I will be for ever in debt to him. Rest in piece

15. I’m still floored. I was genuinely expecting him to make at least one fairly compelling but mildly controversial exclamation about cricket or something tangentially related to it per fortnight into my dribbly years. He was the pantomime villain who destroyed your team in spellbinding fashion, said something silly about it, and yet still seemed the quintessential Bloke Who Would Probably Be Absolutely Lovely If You Had a Drink With Him. For a lot of us in the 90s, he basically was Australia in its muscular, emasculating (and ultimately fairly toxic) pomp, which is quite something for a curvy blond. No batter will ever be completely unafraid of leg-spin because of him. It seemed like he lived hard enough to add some extras to his total, but my goodness will he be missed.

16. Best cricketer of my lifetime.

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