Thursday, December 21, 2006

Spin doctor

Although it's been hard for an England supporter to drum up much enthusiasm for the current Ashes series, one thing must be said.

Shane Warne is a freak. A one-off. The Johnny Mac of Cricket.

Such effortless mastery is unusual in any sport, but the guy's slightly overweight, 37, fond of a R&R life style, and yet.. seeing his delivery to Monty Panesar in the third test just blew me (and Monty) away. A Warne spin delivery is indistinguishable from magic. That slow, short run up. The gentle curve of the slow ball. The confidence of the batsman stepping out to meet it. The swing of the bat - and the ball's no longer there. It has seemingly picked up speed on the bounce, and turned almost 90 degrees and whacked into the stumps. The confused batsman looking around - where the hell did it go? Of course, Monty - aka The Sikh Tweaker - should have known better, seeing that he's a dab hand at the spin delivery himself.

Warney is set to retire from international cricket after the current whitewash of the Ashes. He goes out on top, very probably with the best wicket-taking record in cricket history.

You made cricket cool, dude.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bowling Shane!

It's not the Monty didn't know where it was going, it was that he couldn't do anything about it. If he’s still skipper of Hampshire, get down the county ground next summer for a chance to see Warney bamboozle the Gloucestershire batting line up one last time. The man is a wizard.