MELBOURNE: With yet another glitzy show business touch, Shane Warne, the world's best-known cricketer, will bring down the curtain on his 14-year career, by announcing his retirement on Thursday — just days before he is due to collect his 700th wicket, an undreamed of achievement before he came on the scene.

Warne's decision has been prompted by the fact that at 37 it is taking him longer to persuade his victims to give themselves up but there is a suspicion — since his decision was the lead story on Channel Nine News — that he has been offered work as a cricket commentator, a spot he has always wanted to fill.

"Even as a kid I wanted to hold a microphone, look at the camera and say `This is Shane Warne, for Channel Nine,'" he said a year ago and his second career may mean that, like Richie Benaud, he will one day be remembered better for his work on the TV gantry rather than on the pitch.

CA caught unawares

Warne was lying low ahead of the big announcement and Cricket Australia said they knew nothing about either a press conference or a decision to leave centrestage. There are rumours that Glenn McGrath will retire at the end of the series too.

It is understood that Warne and McGrath will play in the last two Ashes Tests which means he will be available to commentate when the one-day international series involving Australia, England and New Zealand begins next month.

Warne's decision must have shocked his teammates too. I had a long conversation with his coach Terry Jenner on the last day of the Perth Test and he claimed Warne was ready to go on for the foreseeable future.

The announcement comes just six days before the start of the fourth Ashes Test when, unless there is an unexpected lapse in his usual run of success, he will claim his 700th wicket in front of 1,00,000 spectators filling the rebuilt Melbourne Cricket Ground.

`Ball of the century'

It was at the MCG that he emerged as a bronzed, blond beach boy with a heap of talent and very little discipline in 1992 to start his Test career against India. Within a year he had hit the headlines for the first time by bowling the former England captain Mike Gatting with "the ball of the century" at Old Trafford.

It was his first ball in Ashes cricket and by pitching his leg-break outside leg stump and turning it so much that it hit the top of the off stump Warne sent a message to batsmen around the world that he was a formidable wicket-taker.

The other side

It was not just the cricket either. Accusations of ties with bookmakers, a publicity scheme which revolved around him giving up smoking flopped because he was photographed with a cigarette in his mouth before the trial ended and finally a drugs test which he answered by saying he had been taking his mother's diuretic pills all added to the image of a larrikin Aussie.

As his tally of wickets mounted there was no doubt that his Wisden ranking as one of the five cricketers of the twentieth century was unchallenged. Only Muttiah Muralitharan with 674 wickets is close to the Warne mark. He added to his natural skill, brought to its peak in coaching sessions with Jenner, by shrewd publicity announcements in which he always seemed to have one more mystery delivery. He said he had added the "slider" and the "zooter" to the leg-spinner, the googly and the top spinner. He also had magnificent control of pace and length and flight and whether he was trading insults with his opponents or threatening them simply by walking towards the bowling crease rather than running he had a gigantic presence.

Jenner summed it up. "He is the greatest, a genius, an original, an icon; you can pick your own word. No one has ever had his success and he has deserved every bit of it. We won't see his like again. Unique, like Bradman, and we will miss him."

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