Thanx Shane

4th Jan, 07:
The cold but pleasant morning. Sydney, the largest Australian city hosts the last test match of the Ashes, the oldest cricketing rivalry in the history.

Cheering Sydney crowd sipped beer glasses, noisy English band-music chanted loud, fluttering Union Jack, enthralling Mexican waves; looks like an extended New Year party, the true carnival of cricket, the cold breeze from the eastern port itself smelt cricket.

The golden haired, ‘not too fat but bit more’ for a cricketer walks to the pitch, to deliver his last few, to the men at the other end, twenty two yards in front, guarding their stumps with a willow blade. Thousands of kilometres away, in India, it is 5:30 AM, though under the grip of cold wave, millions of cricket fans glue to their television sets to have a glimpse of the mesmerising magic of spin bowling and the wizard, SHANE WARNE.

This magician revolutionised the art of slow bowling, where wrist did the work, right from early nineties to his last match in an era where bowlers constantly lost their edge to batsmen as well as the less helping conditions. But he stood tall, his bluff and bluster and mischief and innocence somehow intact, beheaded more preys in the longer version of the game, beating his quicker counter parts.

In the SCG, near the official logo of 3G Mobile, the co-sponsor of Cricket Australia, we read the words, ‘Thanx Shane’. We too chant in his final match, ‘Thanx Shane’, not for bringing beauty to the game, but for preaching it.

Salutations to the king of spin bowling who was more famous (than loved)!