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Next only to Bradman

"Who writes your scripts?" a cricketer asked Ian Botham after he returned to Test cricket with a wicket off his first ball. It's a question that has been asked many times of Shane Warne during a fairy-tale career. It is guaranteed that the greatest spinner the world has seen will take an unprecedented 700th Test wicket in front of an adoring hometown crowd at that grand stage, the MCG, and retire a Test later — satisfied in the knowledge that he helped Australia regain the Ashes. The 37-year-old genius has revealed that he would have probably retired at the end of the 2005 Ashes series in England had Australia won it. Getting back the Ashes was "my mission, and I couldn't have worked the script any better." All great sportspersons have an uncanny sense of timing but few cricketers in the modern era have been blessed with this virtue as extravagantly as Warne. The quality that set him apart from the rest has been his ability to do what he did during the second Ashes Test at Adelaide — seize a moment against the odds and clothe it in the finery of pure magic. As Samuel Coleridge might have described it: "Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." Is it any surprise that Warne is going out on his terms, trailing clouds of glory?

In this era of hype when the word genius has been done to death, Shane Warne is the real thing. He has redefined wrist spin, allying incredible variety with never-seen-before control and a rare cricketing intelligence. Injury may have robbed him of some of his variations towards the end of his career, but his uncompromising accuracy remained his offensive weapon. He may have had his moments of weakness off the field but on it he was courage, chivalry, and attitude personified. Warne wouldn't have been Warne had he gone about the business of pushing up the bar like a Tendulkar or a Sampras. If he seemed cocky on the field, there was not a trace of the spoilt megastar in him. His chivalry towards worthy opponents was manifest in the glowing tributes he paid Tendulkar and, more recently, in the admiration he has expressed for Kevin Pietersen. It is entirely fitting that Glenn McGrath appears to have chosen Warne's final Test at the SCG as his curtain call. Will the exit of this pair, the key factor behind Australia's dominance of world cricket, signal the end of that dominance? Steve Waugh has come up with the interesting thought that Warne was "pretty comfortably the second best player ever" — after Sir Donald Bradman. Come to think of it, who can disagree?

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