The ball would whirr and purr as it moved and then teased and tortured the batsmen till the inevitable happened. The flipper, stung, spit and bit when it landed, throwing up dirt and pieces of the pitch in its furious revolutions. There was magical drift that came laden with a sorcerer’s spell. There was massive spin which defied the laws of physics. He had lost his googly by then but everything else was utter perfection. The Australia-West Indies of 1999 had him facing Lara in his imperious pomp. “Warne who? McGill the new spin king”! screamed a newspaper headline.īut Warne made everyone eat their words and from then on many of my favorite cricket moments revolved around him. Soon after Warne suffered a shoulder injury and Stuart McGill became the first-choice spinner for Australia. Using numbers to define Warne is like using sound wave theory to define Mozart’s symphonies
I knew about the “Ball of the Century” and had seen him bowl in the 1996 World Cup, but Australia didn’t play two matches and Warne was upstaged by Jayasuriya and the marauding Sri Lankans. Was Warne really that scary? Of course, my uncle had seen Warne torment England Ashes after Ashes first-hand and knew his game. My uncle was a stoic man and hearing his rather emotional and slightly irrational words made me wonder.
#HOUSE FLIPPER 2.43 SERIES#
Warne didn’t play but the rest of bowlers ran through Pakistan to give Australia their first Test series win in Pakistan since 1959. It was a portentous statement, and prayers were answered though it was a shoulder injury and not ankle. “Gentleman let us pray that he breaks an ankle or a leg.” “The only way Pakistan will win is if Shane Warne breaks his ankle,” he intoned.
As a barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, he certainly had the gravitas for bold proclamations. After weighing Pakistan’s chances for well over an hour my uncle announced judgement. In 1998 I was at my uncle’s home for dinner and talk invariably turned to Australia’s upcoming tour to Pakistan.
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