Atherton: Warne had raw cricketing intelligence in spades

Sky Sports Cricket's Michael Atherton gives his reaction to Friday's shocking news of the passing of Australia great Shane Warne - a long-time adversary on the pitch and colleague in the commentary booth...

Hearing the news, I was totally stunned. I don't think I've ever been more shocked in my life.

A man who had such vitality, full of energy and life and suddenly not to be there.

He's my age effectively - he's a year younger than I am - so he's somebody I played against a lot for a decade in Ashes cricket and I commentated alongside him for a long, long time so I know him pretty well.

I enjoyed his commentary enormously. I think he was at his best when was what we call the colour person, the expert No 2.

I don't think many people read the game better than he did, and of course he had great character and a way of putting it across.

But all the intelligence you saw as a player - I think he's the most intelligent bowler I played against - came across in his commentary.

And using the word intelligence, I'm not talking about A-Levels and that kind of thing, but raw cricketing intelligence which he had in spades.

He was a fabulous bowler.

In fact, leg spin was a dying art when he was picked actually.

With Australia, you think of the land of the wrist spinner, it's where wrist spin flourished and really developed because of the hot sun and the hard pitches.

But in the 70s it was pace bowling that dominated: Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson - and Lillee was Shane Warne's hero when he was growing up.

So wrist spinners had slightly withered away a little bit and it was almost this forgotten art, and then suddenly Allan Border picked him [Warne] in 1992.

The early Tests were a bit in and out and then obviously that first Ashes Test