CRICKET:Donald Bradman is alleged to have had tears in his eyes when he batted in his last Test. If Shane Warne did yesterday, it was purely from hilarity. There have been better innings of 70 played at the Sydney Cricket Ground, but few can have been so relaxed. He might almost have been whistling as the bowlers ran in.
The situation - 260 for six, still 32 runs from a lead - would have fazed a younger man. Yet Warne took guard radiating a breezy bonhomie, like a man walking into a pub and saying: "So, who's going to buy me a beer?"
Warne seriously fancies his batting, as he always fancies his luck. He is not a fluent mover. When he plays and misses, he looks as stiff-armed and flat-footed as a Lego man. If you saw him on the village green, he would not seem out of place; in Test cricket this sheer incongruity can make him an awkward proposition.
He is aggressive, has a good eye and a strong bottom hand, and fancies the sweep off the slow bowlers and the hook off the faster ones.
His footwork is generally no more than a back-and-across step, like his paterfamilias Ian Chappell. But, also like Chappell, he gets his retaliation in first.
His chief verbal target yesterday was Paul Collingwood at slip, for reasons chiefly of proximity and generally of Pommieness, with maybe a hint of his Melbourne roots. As any Aussie Rules fan will tell you, everyone hates Collingwood.
Flintoff at first brought the field in for the new batsman. Warne, of course, is as new as disco. He swept his first ball finely for four and his third massively for six. Sajid Mahmood had seen nothing like it and ensured that everyone saw more of it than should have been the case.
When Warne was 19, Alastair Cook's excellent flat throw from deep backward point would have found Warne out by a metre had Mahmood not been standing in front of the stumps wondering about the Human Genome Project, oblivious to the activity round him.
Adam Gilchrist perished unluckily, but Warne then combined with Stuart Clark in the fourth-highest partnership of the match, 68 in 12 overs of uncomplicated clumping.
The best shots were straight. At the end of one drive down the ground off Monty Panesar, Warne could almost have been posing for a sculptor.
But, as the bowling grew ragged and the field changed listlessly, there was hardly a delivery that did not offer a scoring opportunity.
There was something poignant about the innings too, for Warne will probably never again have it so good.
No one could tell him what to do. The objectives were simple. Their pursuit was fun. He could bat as if there was no tomorrow - as, for him, there was not.
Life after Saturday will not be the same. There will be obstacles and ambiguities. There will be rules and regulations and responsibilities. He will still be Shane Warne but he will not be able to prove it. No wonder so many players stave off the dread day of retirement, with the loss of those familiar simplicities and certainties.
Time, then, for one last trick. What will it be? Legend has it that Warwick Armstrong, the last captain to lead Australia to a 5-0 Ashes triumph, spent the final session of his farewell Test at The Oval reading the paper at slip, on the grounds he wanted to see who Australia were playing. Warne, of course, is not much of a reader - except, maybe, of that famous script.
Guardian Service
