Shane Warne and his cricket genius are gone and it still doesn't seem real for a mourning nation

The words still don't feel real. Maybe they never will.

How can Shane Warne be dead? How can he have ripped his last leggie? Punched his last dart? Gone on his last tangent on commentary?

For a generation of Australians, it is difficult to comprehend, because Warne, from beginning to end, was larger than life. He was a man who was the Australian dream and lived that dream like so many other Australians think they would.

We all tried to do it. We all saw Warnie rip the shit out of the ball, we saw him drift it through the air only to turn at a seemingly impossible angle once it hit the pitch and totally bamboozle whatever poor South African or English batsman was unlucky enough to cop one of his specials.

Just about every single one of us hit the pitch or the front yard or the street in front of the house, trundled in with the two-step run-up that was really more of a walk up and tried to turn our wrist just like Warnie did, because how hard can it be? Just pitch it up and really rip it out of the back of your hand. If the big unit with the blond hair who loved baked beans and beer could do it, surely it can't be so hard?

Look back at our blog as the world reacts to the sudden death of Shane Warne.

But it was, of course, and that was Warne's magic. Of all the millions of kids — and let's not lie to ourselves, adults as well — who thought they could do it, none of them succeeded. We'll all keep trying. If you didn't give a Kookaburra or a tennis ball a tweak in the last couple of days then sadly, you might not be fair dinkum. But we'll never get there. Never, if you gave us a million years.

In a time before social media made the world's greatest athletes all the more accessible and gave us voyeuristic glimpses into their lives,