Shane Warne: A cricket phenomenon whose brilliance could not be put into words

Live fast, die young. But Shane Warne only bowled slow.

A couple of steps up to the wicket. Then, eesh. Wang. Kapow. What has just happened?

Ask Mike Gatting. Even he doesn’t know. And he was there. Or thereabouts, anyway.

Then, what happens next? Surely never in cricket history was there more theatre about what happened next than when Warne was approaching the crease to bowl.

Warne was cricket personified. In all other sports, the opposition’s main star, the chief tormentor, is a source of antagonism. But Warne was a source of magnetism. Someone who would destroy your team, and you would be grateful for the chance to have witnessed it.

He was so, so good. Better than anything we had seen before. And, unless we are very, very lucky, better than anything we will see again.

I remember once Michael Atherton, in an intimate talk to a room full of cricket badgers on tour in the Caribbean, saying he could not explain how much better Warne was than any other opponent he encountered.

He struggled for words to convey what it was like to be in a contest against the man. This was Michael Atherton, a man of more words than the Oxford English Dictionary. Someone who had shared the playing field with him, and the commentary box, too, and still remained awed by him.

The rest of us had to make do with a view from the boundary’s edge, 90 metres or so away. Or via the television screen. Which was privilege enough, too.

All those moments that come so readily to mind, even without searching YouTube.

The Gatting ball that announced him as a cricket phenomenon. He never looked back. He picked Graham Gooch’s pocket. He owned Herschelle Gibbs in the World Cup. He mesmerised Kevin Pietersen in the Ashes. He rumbled Sanath Jayasuriya.

All those