Riddle of the blonde leg-spinner
The Hindu, 1 October
Future historians of the game may come to regard the early years of the 21st century as a golden age for Test cricket, an era resplendent with competitive, dramatic encounters, fired by aggressive batting and captaincy, and graced with a duel for global supremacy between two unique slow bowlers.
But many will feel that not all the characteristics of our cricketing age are golden. Australia has set a muscular tone for the era. These are big men waving big sticks and seeking candidly to impose themselves – physically and psychologically – on their opponents. “They’re sort of like the bullies of the show,” observed New Zealand’s Scott Styris. “They throw their weight around in a psychological sense and try to grab the upper hand before the game’s even started.”
Since terminating the long era of West Indian dominance with a series victory in the spring of 1995, Australia’s record has been remarkable, winning 24 out of the 31 series they’ve played (and losing only three – including two to India in India). Of their last 100 Tests they won 60 and lost only twenty.
More even than Steve Waugh or Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne is the single cricketer who most epitomises this period of Australian swagger. And it’s a striking comment on the game and the personalities involved that the team’s totem of success is neither a broad shouldered batsman nor a long limbed quick bowler, but a chunky leg spinner.
The ebullient, larger-than-life Warne is one of the most compelling sporting figures of our times. A master showman who relishes a crowd and an occasion, he loves to confound expectations. He’s the slow bowler with the fast bowler’s temperament, just as Muhammad Ali was the heavyweight who danced like a middleweight. In a team that likes to make its presence felt, no one’s presence is more powerful than Warne’s.
With his arsenal of leggies, toppies, zooters, shooters, sliders, flippers – not mention the crucial mystery ball that does absolutely nothing but flummoxes batsmen merely because it is so laden with potential menace – he blends technique and spontaneity, consistency and surprise. As a bowler, he’s an unlikely, extrovert Hamlet, by turns teasing, sulking, stalking, plotting, manically playful, viscerally vindictive.
In a familiar Australian mode (but one which Don Bradman disdained) he brings a welcome air of informality to cricket’s sometimes rigid proceedings (I see him standing bare-chested on the balcony at Lord’s a few years back, swigging a beer and merrily trading insults with English fans). The larrikin image, however, is tinged with darkness. Cricket’s eternal prankster is a complicated persona. He can be petty, shifty, whiney, churlish (see his comments on Murali) and at times childishly abusive (there’s not much wit in the Warne sledging).
And then there’s the drugs test that resulted in a year’s ban from the game. Warne believes he was hard done by, and much of the Australian public concurs. But not only did he test positive for two banned diuretics (substances used as masking agents for illegal steroids), he was also chastised by the ACB’s tribunal for giving evidence that was “vague, unsatisfactory, inconsistent and not entirely truthful”. Nor was the tribunal impressed by the superstar’s excuse that his mother had given him the drugs.
It will be said that Warne has served his time and that’s the end of the matter.
But the scandal raised issues that too many in the cricket world would like to gloss over. Of course, Warne’s transgression was minor compared to the flagrant doping common In big-time north American sports. What’s disturbing, though, is the way that the casual American attitude seems to be creeping into cricket via the Australians.
Modern sport, harnessed as it is to a neo-liberal, winner-take-all economic order, places a huge premium on victory at all costs. That underlying social reality is bound to affect the ethos of the game. However, it’s important to stress that the problem here is not the drive to win (without which there’s no cricket), but the insidious notion that winners are not subject to the same standards of accountability as the rest of us.
None of which will make the upcoming series any less fascinating. During the
last decade, only the Indians have consistently challenged the Australians, and only Indian batsmen have consistently defied Warne’s wiles. He has never taken five wickets in an innings against India and his Indian wickets have been captured at an exorbitant average of 55.44 (as compared to his career average of 25.47).
“I’ve thought about the Indian tour,” he’s said. “The real test of a spinner is how you go over here. It’s the hardest place to ply your trade.“ This is good news for the neutral spectator, because rising to a challenge is a Warne speciality, and any series where Warne plays a major role is never less than entertaining.
