Playboy not game anymore

Shane Warne, who has likened his life to a soap opera, always entertained and excited his fans.

The game of cricket will not be the same again. After the fifth Ashes Test in Sydney starting January 2 cricket will be duller no doubt, what with it’s greatest spinner and arguably greatest bowler no longer set to appear on centre stage. Shane Warne, 37, the holder of the world record of 699 Test wickets has almost had enough of bamboozling batsmen.

Soon, the game of cricket will be unrecognisable to itself. Soon, it will be plainer and quieter. Soon, abandoned by the front page, the opinion page and the social page, it will return to the back. Soon it will also be a finale for Glenn McGrath, 36, who is quitting all forms of cricket to spend more time with his wife, Jane, who is battling cancer.

Warne took a dead art and revived it, McGrath made fashionable the virtues of line and length. Together they have been the most lethal combination of bowlers the game has ever seen.  After the Ashes cricket’s greatest double act will no longer feature together. Warne, named as one of five cricketers of the 20th century by the sport’s respected Wisden almanac in 2000, hinted at retirement two days ago after Australia beat England in Perth to reclaim the Ashes following its defeat 15 months ago.

Warne, who has likened his life to a soap opera, is set to accept a position on the Nine Network’s commentary team, the Herald added. Last year, Warne was dumped from a A $300,000 television contract with Nine after the breakup of his 10-year marriage, following reports in UK newspapers that he had a series of extra-marital affairs in England.

His dismissal of England batsmen Mike Gatting in the 1993 Ashes series with a delivery that pitched outside leg stump and spun to hit off stump was dubbed “the ball of the century.” Warne has taken a Test hat-trick, won the man-of-the-match award in a World Cup final and been the subject of seven books. He was the first cricketer to reach 650 Test wickets and scored more runs than any other player without making a Test century.

Away from the field, controversy has never been far away from the blond surf-lover who played Australian Rules football as a teenager. Warne was stripped of Australia’s vice-captaincy in 2000 after making lewd telephone calls and was fined 10 years ago for taking payments from a bookmaker. He also was caught smoking at a time when he was endorsing an anti-smoking product.

In 2003, he was suspended for a year for testing positive to a banned substance on the eve of the World Cup in South Africa. At the time, Warne said he swallowed a fluid-reducing tablet given to him by his mother without realizing it contained a prohibited substance. Sometimes, on being hit for four, Warne would groan and throw up his hands as if to wonder where he had gone so wrong. The next ball would scuttle through the unsuspecting batsman’s defence. It was all a deadly plot.

Above all, he had the temperament for the big stage.

In his unauthorised biography, Paul Barry said Warne’s triumphs amounted to 1000 women — although his source was anonymous. But his affable nature, willingness to voice an opinion and, it has to be said, even his infidelities, have conjured an image of a loveable rogue.