Today marks his return and Gideon Haigh is writing about it:
Warne is due to step on to Melbourne’s Junction Oval this morning to join the second day of the Victoria Second XI’s game against Queensland’s Academy of Sport, to star again in a drama of his own creation.
…..
Where sporting comebacks usually involve the appearance of some portly travesty of the former great, moreover, the 34-year-old Warne returns perhaps as strong and streamlined as he has ever been. Over the past six weeks he has had three 50-ball bowling sessions a week, plus a programme of bike rides, swimming, sprint work, weights, plus skipping, boxing and karate routines. With his earring, photogenic smile and hair grown fashionably shaggy, he looks fit to star in a reality television show – which over the next few weeks he essentially will.
If I had to assemble my Top 10 experiences of cricket spectating in going on 50 years, watching this guy bowl would certainly come within the first three. My only quibble with Gideon Haigh is that he says of Warne that he is ‘perhaps’ the greatest ever practitioner of leg-spin bowling. Uh uh – there’s no perhaps about it. Warne is arguably the greatest bowler of any kind who ever played. As a young Australian sitting behind me at the Oval in August 2001 said, ‘Spin ’em out of town, Shane.’