Shane Warne's send-off was larger than life, just like the man himself

The phrase that has come to mind so many times since Shane Warne's passing — and was raised so many times during his state memorial on Wednesday at the MCG — was 'larger than life'.

Warne could feel that way sometimes. On the final day of a Test match, say, or in one of those spells where the ball was whizzing around and he was turning the thing all over the joint when he seemed more than a bloke sending down deliveries and more like a cricketing god.

However, before Warne was a cricketer he was a man and Shane Warne the man was farewelled by the people who knew him best at a private ceremony 10 days ago. The details of that ceremony are private, as they should remain, because no matter how many overs we may have watched, almost none of us knew Shane Warne as a man.

We got a sense of it when his children — Jackson, Brooke and Summer — spoke to end the state memorial.

Each of them take after him so much, and they spoke so emotionally — not of Shane Warne the cricketer, the hero we all knew so well, but of their father, who they'll miss forever — that cricket stopped mattering for a while.

We didn't know Warne as a brother, a son, a father, a husband or a friend. He was those things before and after we knew him as a cricketer, but a cricketer was how we knew him. The Warne family said they wanted this to be a celebration of Warne's life, and cricket was such a great part of his life.

So it made sense that the national anthem was sung by Greta Bradman, giving the day a link to the other titan of Australian cricket, Sir Donald Bradman, her grandfather.

It made sense that the fans in the stands were encouraged to wear their cricket gear, because Warne was never one to stand on ceremony. He liked the things he liked, and he liked