There’s an old adage about footballers who make fans rise to their feet every time they’re on the dribble – a younger Cristiano Ronaldo was one, Lionel Messi another. We stand, expectantly, waiting for something to happen – and it usually did.
You’d probably get a bit sore if you did that every time Shane Warne came in to bowl, but the principle is the same.
When that blond-haired, zinc’d-up stocky king half jogged, half walked to the crease, licking his lips and palming the ball from one hand to the other, we always expected – and on 708 times in Test cricket, he delivered.
But he was never more electrifying than in England 17 years ago.
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Much like one GOAT, Tom Brady, arguably played his best Super Bowl in a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles rather than one of his seven wins, Warne’s 2005 Ashes are still remembered as the finest moment of the finest year of a legendary career.
Forty wickets – 16 more than Andrew Flintoff, England’s most potent bowler, and double that of any other Australian. He would finish the calendar year with 96, shattering Dennis Lillee’s then-record of 85.
Muttiah Muralitharan claimed 90 scalps in 2006, but nobody has come anywhere close since.
The 2005 Ashes are rightly regarded as one of, if not the best ever – where many an adult and schoolkid was stumbling into their place of work or education, bleary-eyed and half-gone, after another night of enthralling cricket.
The fact that Warne was doing it at this level was in itself remarkable. He was in his mid-30s, closing in on retirement, on the wrong side of a series of off-field incidents, but none of that seemed to matter when he had a ball in his hand and an Englishman was at the other end of the pitch.
It was interesting to hear Michael Vaughan speak ahead of play against Pakistan on day two – not just because of his friendship with Warne, but for specifically mentioning those magical weeks in 2005.
“We love him,” The former skipper said.
“He murdered us for pretty much every Ashes series – and even in 2005, he got 40 wickets. Without Warnie in 2005, we would have won 4-1 convincingly.
“We feel in the UK he’s one of us – and that’s why he’s loved so much, because wherever he’s been in the world [he’s loved],” he said.
“He’s going to be hugely missed over here.”
Such was Warne’s genius that he could trap Ian Bell at Lord’s with a ‘slider’ that didn’t turn at all, and then a week later, clean bowl Andrew Strauss at Edgbaston with a delivery that spun halfway across the pitch.
And it was that 6-42 in the latter that is perhaps the finest spell of Warne’s whole career. With Australia facing a deficit of 99 runs after each side had batted once, they needed some magic in England’s second dig.
Not only did Warne get Strauss, but he got Bell, Flintoff, and his old mate Kevin Pietersen as well as a couple of tailenders.
There are two defining images of the match – one is Flintoff comforting Brett Lee after Michael Kasprowicz’s demise ended the match in thrilling fashion, the other is Strauss, utterly bewildered at how a ball that nearly landed on the grass on the off side somehow spun back, around his entire body, and shattered his leg stump.
The brilliance subsided slightly in a lop-sided third Test, where Warne took only four wickets as the match fizzled to a draw. Eight in the fourth and 12 in the fifth Test gave Australia great platforms to build on, but it wasn’t enough.
In hindsight, with how Flintoff and Pietersen performed, it never could have been.
But it doesn’t really matter – for one, Australia won the next series 18 months later. But more importantly, if the last 24 hours has taught us anything, it’s that people are defined by more than accolades and victories.
Warne had a lot – more than most, in fact – so it’s ironic that literally the only time in his career that he lost an Ashes series, was when he himself played his best cricket.
But that ball to Strauss lives on, him sheepishly walking off after stepping on his own stumps late on day four lives on, and the man himself lives on – and still will, long after the urn changes hands another 100 times.
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