Shane Warne dead? But he was immortal, he was never meant to die

How can Shane Warne be dead?

That’s what they were saying all morning – on social media, group chats, in the hairdresser, the Saturday morning stretch classes – where we took our places, rolled out our mats and murmured to one another, “Oh my God, how about Warnie?”

How about it?

He was still very young at 52. But more than that – his death, at least in these fresh hours of the news, seems surreal.

He can’t be dead because he was ridiculously, abundantly alive. Despite smoking, drinking and, at times in his career, not following the ideal diet – he exuded a vitality that is missing from even the most professionally trained, honed, healthy, mindset-coached and nutrient-enriched athlete.

He just seemed to fizz with life.

This life force found its way everywhere; he transcended cricket as easily as he played the game. There he was pashing Sharon Strzelecki in Kath and Kim. There he was in the British tabloids, caught in grainy photos in some long forgotten sex scandal. There he was in the glossy magazines, smooth of brow, filled of face, dating Liz Hurley, and seeming deliriously thrilled at his luck. There he was having a cheeky smoke in breach of his contract. There he was – entire mouth round a pot glass of beer, drinking with no hands (he needed hands to hold his ciggie).

Even of late, there were no signs of a gentlemanly, subdued retirement to a private island or a country estate. He was Shane Warne – and he was going to keep amusing, annoying and appalling us forever.

The shock is in part that Warne is mortal. Celebrities that populate the media landscape for decades, as Warne has done, can appear to exist in a different realm – one where they never die. To die is to end their story that we have been consuming for