Shane Warne, spin genius with soap-opera life

Shane Warne mixed legendary cricket deeds with lurid headlines away from the pitch in a career as bewitching as his famed wrong ‘un.

Warne, who died at the age of 52 from a suspected heart attack on Friday, was never one for half-measures throughout his extraordinary 15-year Test career.

The greatest leg-spinner of them all carved out a flamboyant lifestyle cast outside the mould of a traditional cricketing icon, often putting himself at odds with the game’s purists.

Vainglorious Warne did things his way and will be remembered for his dalliances and forthright opinions as much as for his pioneering 708 Test wickets in a 145-Test career that made him the scourge of batsmen worldwide.

Warne is entrenched in Australia’s sporting pantheon — in the eyes of many he is second only to cricket’s immortal Don Bradman.

Yet his achievements are tempered for some by his penchant for a zesty private life, including at one point being engaged to British actress Liz Hurley.

But Warne’s contribution to cricket is not in doubt, notably after he resurrected the waning art of leg-spin, becoming the first bowler to take 700 Test wickets and delivered the most famous ball in the sport’s history.

Warne posted inauspicious figures of 1-150 in his 1992 Test debut but knuckled down under spin guru Terry Jenner. Eighteen months later, Warne riveted the cricketing world with the “ball of the century” against England.

Warne’s first leg-break delivery in an Ashes Test turned viciously to bamboozle England’s Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993 that heralded the arrival of a cricketing superstar.

He was a master of mind games, targeting batsmen ahead of a series and warning he was working on a new mystery ball to bowl out his “bunnies” in the opposition line-up.

He gave a man-of-the-match performance when Australia won the World Cup in 1999, and was known for a sharp and inventive cricketing brain which saw him long touted as Australian Test skipper.

But even Warne himself once described his life as a soap opera, such was the litany of off-field controversies.

“Warney”, also nicknamed “Hollywood”, survived drug and bookmaking scandals and pursued an energetic love life which is widely thought to have cost him the Australian captaincy.

In 1998 it emerged that Warne and Australian team-mate Mark Waugh had been fined three years earlier for supplying information to an Indian bookmaker.

Warne was stripped of the Australian team vice-captaincy in 2000 after it emerged he had bombarded an English nurse with lewd text messages after meeting her in a nightclub.

Warne was inducted into the International Cricket Council Hall of Fame at Lord’s in 2013, just days after finally calling time on his career.