Cricket NewsShane Warne, Test cricket's greatest wicket-taker and arguably the finest bowler the world has seen, is set to retire from the international stage at the end of the Ashes series.
Next week, on his home turf at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and in front of 100,000 fans, he is expected to take his 700th Test wicket, the first to reach such a stratospheric mark having been the first to reach 600, against England at Manchester in 2005.
It is thought he regards this as a fitting seal on a 15-year career that revitalised the game by breaking the dominance of the pace men. In future, he will be doing no more than spinning yarns in the Channel Nine commentary box.
No cricketer of the modern era has had such a profound influence on the way the game is played at the top level, nor enjoyed such celebrity and notoriety. His bowling has been the stuff of genius, with unmatched skill allied to strength, control, nerve, iron will, a cricket brain so sharp the waywardness of his personal life made him the best captain Australia never had, psychological nous, unwavering self-belief and competitiveness, and a sense of theatre.
Not since WG Grace has a cricketer worked the umpires with such panache. His range would fill a catalogue, with leg-breaks spun to varying degrees, top-spinners, googlies, sliders, flippers, zooters, shooters and some that appear to do everything. He has introduced an appendix to a lexicon of the game.
In 2000 he was named one of Wisden's five cricketers of the previous century.
A series of high-profile affairs, and sordid newspaper exposes of his text-messaging dexterity, cost him his marriage to Simone, a situation the couple are attempting to rectify. He also had dealings with an illegal bookmaker from the subcontinent, accepting payment for information on such things as pitch conditions and weather.
In 2003 he received a year's ban from the game for taking a banned substance, a diuretic of a kind used as a masking agent for steroids, although he claimed it was for reasons of vanity and was given to him by his mother. He has played no one-day international cricket since resuming his career, a decision designed to prolong his Test ambitions.
This series there has been evidence that, at the age of 37, his powers have diminished from superhuman to merely brilliant. England's batsmen have collectively played him with more certainty than any of their predecessors, so he has been forced to bowl almost twice as many overs per wicket as in the 2005 series in England, in which his 40 wickets and batting almost singlehandedly kept Australia in the contest.
Yet still it was his bowling that was instrumental in forcing the famous victory in the second Test in Adelaide,and it was he who finished off the England innings in Perth to secure the return of the Ashes.
Warne's departure from Test cricket will be the most high-profile of the pending retirements that seem sure to presage the end of a period of Australian dominance that has lasted through almost two decades.
Two weeks ago, the 35-year-old batsman Damien Martyn walked away from Test cricket without warning, and it is accepted pace bowler Glenn McGrath, who will be 37 in February, will call a halt to his Test career after Sydney, although he is expected to play one-dayers until the end of the World Cup in April. Justin Langer, Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden are over 35.
Warne's introduction to Test cricket in the new year of 1992 was low key, with one for 228 in two matches against India, and none for 107 in the first innings of the first Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo seven months later.
Three for 11 in the second innings in Colombo saw Australia to a remarkable win, a sign of things to come. The following year he announced himself to English crowds and the cricket world at large by bowling Mike Gatting with his first ball in Ashes cricket, a delivery so wicked, so hugely spun, that it was dubbed The Ball of The Century.
If in the course of 143 Tests he has sent down many deliveries more spectacular, then none has had the impact of that announcement of his talent. It was the first of 186 England wickets to date, his best Ashes figures so far of 11 for 110 coming in Brisbane in 1994-95, a series in which he took hisonly Test hat-trick.
Batsmen the world over will breathe a sigh of relief. The playing field is about to become more level.
