Thirty years on, Shane Warne’s ball of the century echoes far beyond cricket

Y ou know the ball, maybe not the date, the score or the state of the game, but if you’re reading this then you surely know the ball. Its flight, how it curved and dipped, hit the pitch and twisted back past the bat, and the equal and opposite reactions that followed. The way poor Mike Gatting stared dumbfounded at the ground, as if, yoink, someone had just pinched his lunch from under him, how Ian Healy leaped into the air, both hands above his head, while at the other end Dickie Bird tried to hide his surprise, as if he’d seen a ghost but didn’t want to let on for worry people would say he was crazy.

And Shane Warne, well he just clenched his fist. Warne was as good a salesman as he was a spinner, he knew it was always best to underplay the delivery. “All I tried to do,” he said, “was pitch on leg stump and spin it a fair way.” He didn’t need to say much more. Everyone else did the talking for him.

In November 1849, Charles Dickens went to watch a public hanging at Horsemonger Lane gaol. He wasn’t interested in what happened on the gallows, but in the reactions of the crowd around them. So he watched the faces, the “bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators”, the nature of spectacle was best understood not by looking at event itself, but by studying the impression it made on everyone else.

“First ball! Bail is off! He’s bowled him! Gatting can’t believe it! First ball!” said Tony Lewis on the BBC, with rising excitement. “Lethal.”

Over on Australia’s Channel 9 Richie Benaud came out with: “And he’s done it!” before, of course, he paused, then said: “He’s started off with the most beautiful delivery! Gatting has absolutely no idea what has happened to it.”

Nor did Jonathan Agnew, who was commentating