Published: Aug 02, 2015, 12:15 AM (IST)
Edited: Aug 02, 2015, 12:28 PM (IST)
Shane Warne is a unique, enigmatic superstar. As a legspinner he was mesmeric, and off the field he has, at times, been controversial. He possesses 708 Test wickets, the most by a legspinner in the game and the second-highest by any bowler, after Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan. He spun the ball, kept numerous variations handy, but more importantly, attempted to think the batsman out. He chats about the memorable cricketing and other moments of his career with Michael Parkinson, in a candid interview of more than an hour. The small audience at the studio is engrossed at the interesting recollections, as Parkinson draws Warne to answer various questions related to his career and his presence in the public eye. The video above is the first part of eight. The rest can be accessed easily via this. READ: Shane Warne insists he is on dating app, Tinder
He started his Test journey against India in 1992 in Sydney. Soon after, in the next year, the Mike Gatting moment arrived: Warne got heavy rip on the ball, which drifted significantly to pitch around Gatting’s leg, and spun sharply to beat his defences and disturb the off stump It is widely regarded as the ‘ball of the century’. He had his challenges: he received a thrashing from the Indian batsmen, especially Navjot Singh Sidhu, in Australia’s tour of India under Mark Taylor in 1998. But he emerged from those a better bowler, and kept finding ways to take wickets.
In 2005, when his wife had divorced him due to his extra-marital indulgences, he put his personal trauma behind and took 40 wickets in the Ashes series that England, against whom he has always enjoyed success, won 2-1. His stories on tabloids for non-cricketing, personal events kept getting printed, however, and Warne is honest and not evasive about them to Parkinson. READ: Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne plan to start T20 league involving former international greats
