Cricket: How the hero was rebuilt
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Your support makes all the difference.BEWILDERMENT HAS been something of a common sporting emotion just recently. South Africa managing to run themselves out of town in the World Cup was a moment never to be forgotten, and maybe we can add Pakistan's final flop to that. Certainly we should include the collapse of Martina Hingis at Wimbledon.
Only a cold heart, or the most obnoxious Aussie yobbo, could have felt nothing for the broken Hingis, just a slip of a girl exposed to the toughest character test so often failed by players of more mature years. She was coming off a mental hiding last time out, hurting and freezing trying to handle it.
The demise of Hingis raises a worthwhile debating point about our expectation of sporting stars, particularly the young ones. We are too unforgiving.
Shane Warne has just survived a nightmare which not too many sporting heroes might have got through: a shoulder operation, a finger operation, then being dropped after coming back. Add to that some domestic pressures: of the last 10 months he's been at home with his young family for just four, during which time his wife has given birth to his second child whom, when able to drag himself away from a crocodile line of tickertape parades, he has only just laid eyes on.
Sometime in the middle of all that, just before the World Cup, the Australian vice-captain received a letter from his captain, Steve Waugh. It wasn't hate mail, although scuttlebutt said the relationship had been icy since Waugh had agreed to Stuart MacGill getting the nod over Warne for the deciding Test against the West Indies in Antigua.
Think what you will of Waugh as a tactician, as a charismatically challenged character, but when it comes to taking the tough decision he has no equal. And that was a tough call. Warne had taken 300-plus Test wickets and had been hailed by Sir Donald Bradman as "the best thing to happen to cricket in a quarter of a century".
Warne admits the decision "deeply hurt". Fair enough too, but we could have done without the special press conference, a sort of majestic overkill, to announce we were considering taking our ball and going home, early retirement. So, Warne was classified as stroppy, yet wasn't he merely reflecting the public's quite fickle attitude to him?
How incongruous was it that in the preliminary stages of the World Cup the crowd booed when the ball was tossed to the world's greatest leg-spinner yet, at the end of a dazzling first over Warne was accorded a standing ovation?
Steve Waugh's letter contained two simple messages. One: "Together we need to be seen as the most feared captain and vice-captain combination in the Cup." Two: "I need you to conquer the world."
For all his bravado and his street-smart side, Warne is really an insecure character. He likes to be liked, but he's so naive he does things that make him easy to dislike: having a smoke when he's signed a multi-thousand dollar contract not to, talking to bookies, the swaggering body language and so on. In the '90s perception matters all the time.
There is no doubt that Warne had begun to believe his own publicity, that he and not Waugh should be the Australian captain. That was naive and it surely impacted negatively on his bowling focus. He was also trying to do too much with the ball, trying for too much variation.
Once he settled, both in temperament and in tactics, he was as magnificent as ever. His focus was phenomenal and, believe it or not, the most likely reason for that was the sudden realisation that his captain did know what he was talking about, that together they could indeed lift the World Cup. A friendship renewed.
Warne is now contemplating his future, almost certainly with a round or two of his beloved toasted cheese sandwiches before him. He may not want to go to Arjuna Ranatunga's playground, Sri Lanka, before the next Australian summer when Pakistan and India visit, but he needs to be careful he doesn't become choosy, as Greg Chappell once did to the detriment of replacement captain Kim Hughes.
It's best that Warne accepts the challenge from MacGill head-on. The only alternative, retirement, would leave him open to a charge of shirking it, of conceding that MacGill is indeed a better bowler. Warne's cup triumph, like a golfer chip-in on the last after a horror round, will bring him back.
Some other points about the cup. Despite the Waugh and Warne show, when cricket lovers gather to analyse the World Cup, the first mention will be of the sorry green giant Allan Donald, his dropped bat the symbol of South Africa's ruin, against a backdrop of celebrating Australians in daffodil yellow.
Then they will mention Glenn McGrath getting Brian Lara, Waugh's 120 off 110 balls and Gibbs being "Gattinged". The flaccid finale to 1999's cliff-hanging contest will get no look-in.
The final prompted a bizarre thought from my local barman. Seduced into the late-night couch-potato position by the excitement of the build-up but deflated by the anti-climactic contest, he suggested that the final should be a best of three. He looked aghast when asked: "What if Pakistan had won the other two?"
The next cup will be in South Africa. I hope the points system is retained because it added spice to the contest. I hope Donald will not be too old at 37 to give it one more try. And, one from left field... what chance Graeme Hick turning out for Zimbabwe?
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