Normally when a great cricketer dies or retires, I celebrate their careers with a review of their statistics. So many wickets, runs in X Tests or Y one-dayers, and so on. Today, the double blow to not just Australian but world cricket goes way beyond pure numbers and are facts.
I read a few days ago about Rod Marsh’s
heart attack and that the prognosis wasn’t good. Therefore, when a perusal of
the BBC Sport website revealed news of his passing, it came as little surprise.
When I looked just an hour or so later to find the face of Shane Warne, I just couldn’t
believe it. Surely a mistake, a joke, a malicious troll. But, no. He was gone
at 52.
It’s rare for a sportsman to transcend his
game and his own country’s borders in the way both Marsh and Warne did. Cricket
fans in England are supposed to hate Aussies, like Real Madrid and Barcelona FC
or Germany and Holland, but it was hard to dislike these two.
The 1970s was the decade when I first developed
an interest in cricket. Swashbuckling Caribbean batsmen like Lloyd, Richards
and Greenidge were my first heroes but powerful personalities were few and far
between, especially in the UK, pre- Botham. Dennis Lillee possessed the most
menace: all swaying necklace, bristling moustache and never-ending run-up.
However, Rod Marsh’s ‘tache was just as famous and he, too, wore his heart on
his sleeve. I recall once seeing him on the TV take a catch off a Lillee lifter
which wasn’t given out. He clearly turned behind him and no expert was needed
to see his lips form an “Aw, F*CK!” You couldn’t imagine Alan Knott saying that!
Like most of his countrymen, Marsh didn’t
play county cricket so I only got to watch him on the box during Ashes series
or in the 1975 World Cup. He wasn’t the smoothest of run scorers, nor the most
elegant of wicketkeepers. Far from it. But he was a fantastic gloveman and always
held your attention.
I don’t think Shane Warne ever kept wicket
but he, too was a magnificent showman. He famously never quite managed a Test
century (Marsh made three) but then that’s not what he was in the side to do. That
was to take wickets, bamboozle the opposition and if he couldn’t get them out,
then at least befuddle them so much that Glenn McGrath would finish the job.
Although he spent several fine seasons in the 2000s at Hampshire, I only
witnessed at first-hand two pre-interval overs from Shane, delivered during the
1997 Lord’s Test when McGrath was busy collecting 8-38. I felt cheated that I didn’t
see more.
I was never a fan of his booze ’n’ fags
lifestyle, the bleach-blond surfer dude persona, but I came to appreciate his
increasing contribution to the sport. The drugs ban, poker and Liz Hurley didn’t
endear him to me but he was clearly well liked on the circuit. Off the field,
he seemed to people like me that he acted dumb and yet, for all the ‘couldn’t
give a shit’ attitude, he obviously cared passionately about cricket and was an
extremely clever bowler. He may have taken a spanking at times but he pretty
much single-handedly reinvented the art of leg-spin. With the establishment of
Twenty20 cricket, we have taken leggies for granted but before burly spiky-haired
Shane burst onto the scene in the early ‘90s, there were perhaps only one or
two plying their trade in the county game. After two decades of pacemen being
the coolest breed in the game, Warne made slow bowling sexy again.
Of course, the Ball of the Century made
a difference, and I will always treasure it not only for the prodigious
movement off the pitch but also for the bemused expression on Mike Gatting’s
face as he trudged off the pitch. I never did like him! I saw the former
England captain speaking on Zoom this morning, giving a warm, emotional eulogy
for the ordinary bloke from Victoria who had been such an on-field enemy but
off-field mate.
That seems to be the gist of all the
obituaries and tweets from the other giants of the sport, from Viv to Virat, Lara
to Tendulkar. As Warne admitted many times in interviews, what you saw is what
you got. He had his flaws but that’s why people liked him. He may not have been
the most gifted bowler of all time, nor the greatest all-rounder but as a passionate
cricketer who encouraged maybe millions to share his love of the game, Rod
Marsh’s former Academy pupil was second to none. I still can’t believe he’s gone.
