Big Interview: Made in a moment – the Ball of the Century

Shane Warne had no idea he was about to take the best, or at least the most famous, wicket of all his 708.

An inexperienced youngster from Victoria, he had already been ‘smashed out the park’ by India and Sri Lanka, but it did not faze Warne as he prepared his very first ball as an Ashes Test player at Old Trafford in June 1993.

Warne admitted he was not thinking about a wicket. He just wanted to spin the ball. Spin a ball the most he had ever spun it. Just to send a note of warning to the dangerous Mike Gatting, who was waiting 22 yards away.

He did not know at the time, it would become the ‘Ball of the Century’. Essentially – at that point and still 25 years later – considered the best delivery of all time.

Neither did he know that split second – a fluke, he confesses, but also ‘meant to be’ – would change his 23-year-old life forever.

Eighteen months earlier, his Australian Rules football dreams had been shattered. His professional sporting dreams were in tatters. Warne had been delivering pizzas to make ends meet.

But that delivery on that tour propelled Warne into stardom.

It changed his world. It was the start of a life in the spotlight. Tabloid headlines – both front and the back pages.

“In one of the first scenes of the stage show there was me on a beanbag swigging a dozen beers. I was thinking ‘How did they know that?!’” Warne laughed as he recalled stage plays made about his life as the example of his new-found fame.

“It changed my life. Suddenly going in a pub and having a pint with a few of the boys, you’d run into 20 photographers that would chase you down the street.

“They’d drive like lunatics when you get in a car, hide behind bushes outside your house. I was 23 years of age. I didn’t know what was going on.

“I was like ‘Guys, what do you want? A picture – just take one’.

“But they always seemed to do it when you were stuffing your face with hot chips or pie or whatever.

“It opened me up to that world. The public eye, photos and stories. The ball changed my life in a good way.

“There’s no school for that as a young kid. I’ve tried to be honest and up front.”

The only schooling Warne had wanted to do as a youngster was get into professional Australian Rules. He was on the books of his local side, St Kilda – The Saints – who currently play in the sport’s top flight.

Things didn’t work out how he wanted. That sporting dream was quashed. Not long after another avenue was mapped out in front of him.

“At 19 years old, getting told your services are no longer required at St Kilda was like having your dreams shattered. It was pretty devastating at the time,” he admitted.

“I wasn’t qualified at anything else, I was delivering pizzas, driving trucks delivering beds, working at a jewellery store.

“Those things didn’t do it for me, but I had to pay the bills. I came to England in 1989, played a bit of cricket and I liked it.

“Then I went back and played first-class cricket and got big for Australia.

“In 18 months everything turned around. I went from wanting to play football to representing my country at cricket. It was like ‘Wow!’

“Once I had a taste it was like ‘Right, now I know it’s what I wanted to do’. Then it was a case of was I good enough?

“I worked pretty hard and trying to be the best I could. Spoke with people like Ian Chappell and Terry Jenner. Eventually it started to click.”

Warne owes a lot of his leggie prowess to Jenner. Although admitting he had a natural skill for cricket, believing cricket found him – it was the influence of former player turned coach Jenner, who took him in and whipped him into shape, that really brought on his technique.

“I turned up at Terry Jenner’s and he said to me ‘you’re overweight. You’ve got no discipline, you think you’re better than you are and you don’t deserve to play for Australia.

“I got more disciplined and a hunger to be better. I bowled and bowled and bowled for five or six hours every day.”

He explained how players would call Jenner ‘the master of leg spin’ and feels like their meeting came as perfect timing.

“We met each other at a good time in our lives,” added Warne. “Terry had just been released out of prison. He was in a low security prison for embezzling 1,500 dollars (600 quid). He was in for 18 months, he got out, I was in the academy trying to be better. I got introduced and we just struck it up straight away.

“We just clicked. He needed something after a terrible time and I came along at the right time.

“He was such a clever guy. He knew so much about the game. We nicknamed him the spin doctor. He understood it really well.

“He would show me. When you see the vision, it would click better. It was a great friendship and unfortunately he’s no longer with us.”

Warne’s career, both on and off the pitch, has seen him make many a front-page headline as well as back.

Match-fixing allegations in Sri Lanka in 1994 hung over the Australian superstar for a while.

Warne and former Aussie team-mate Mark Waugh were ‘conned’ by a bookmaker into providing information regarding conditions ahead of one-day matches with India and Pakistan.

“Yes, I was a little naive,” Warne admits. “I was in a casino in Sri Lanka playing on the roulette and Blackjack and lost 5,000 dollars. I was introduced to someone at the bar who offered me 5,000 on a chip to play.”

He lost that money too.

Warne was later called by this individual, suspiciously, on two occasions. But didn’t think too much of it.

He was later fined by the Australian Cricket Board for accepting money and giving out information to a bookmaker.

He added: “I was done for supplying information to a bookmaker, but I did not actually know I’d done it.”

Warne accepts he has made mistakes in a colourful career, but there is no doubting his achievements.

For a youngster from south east Australia, whose sporting dreams were shattered before he resorted to delivering pizza, he did pretty well.