Shane Warne released his own label of wine last week, a strange enough concept in itself. But with new-found cheekbones glistening above an all-black ensemble of bodyshirt, pinstripe trousers and patent-leather shoes, the former fatboy of spin is looking better than ever in Melbourne and offers little cause for English optimism. ”Hopefully they’re trembling,” he said.
Well they might. Warne insists he is the same knockabout bloke he has always been, and his confidence has certainly not shrunk. But he has transformed his physique since he last confronted Nasser Hussain’s men at the Oval 14 months ago and is justifiably proud of his efforts. ”It hasn’t been easy,” he said, and he was not talking about picking a pinot from a verdot.
For England, the tale of the tape is disturbing. Warne took 31 wickets in that last series, which began while he was still heaping butter and cheese on the occasional lettuce leaf that invaded his plate. Now, more than 15kg lighter, he is fresh from 27 wickets in three Tests against Pakistan, the last two in Sharjah’s desert heat which not long ago would have melted his resistance.
Astute Warne-watchers put a hefty figure on how often he has announced a return to ”the golden years” in the latter half of his career. Now he relishes every opportunity to show off his golden frame. Victoria’s wicketkeeper Darren Berry describes his close friend as ”unbelievably skinny” and reckons he is consequently bowling as well as ever.
Warne thinks himself lucky to be ”in some of the best form of my life” and has embraced a foreign level of fitness like a new toy. Healthy body is born of healthy mind and after several years of upheaval on and off the field he claims to be at peace on a cerebral front too. ”I’m enjoying being me, and it’s the first time in a long time.”
Some would argue that such serenity is easily achieved when you have the resources as he noted with a swish of Shane Warne Collection cabernet merlot: ”When your friends come over for dinner and you can actually pour them a bit of your own wine, things are going pretty well.” But the physical metamorphosis still beggars belief.
Renouncing the habits of a lifetime can be a testy business. Like the star member of a therapy group, Warne said that ”the diet I’ve been on for most of my life is pizzas, beer and yelling abuse at the footy”. To change at 33, when the easy option would be to rest on record and stomach, is another unexpected turn in a career that continues to bamboozle.
As Australia’s epic 2001 tour of India ended, Warne looked at two things. One was Australia’s schedule, which sagged under the weight of eight Test series, a World Cup and sundry one-day commitments in the following two years. The other was a mirror, which showed him ”10 chins from all the beer”. It hit him like a visitation.
”I realised if I’m going to get through this, I’ve got to be in the best physical shape I can,” he said. ”I went on a bit of a kick, and the last six or seven months I’ve really gone the extra yards, running a lot more and doing extra things.”
Jock Campbell, Australia’s fitness coach, first met Warne while the leg-spinner was nursing a broken finger two years ago. Campbell recalls his skin-fold thickness, obtained from pinching eight sites on the body, coming in at 210mm, which Campbell subtly assesses as ”quite large”. Now he is in the 90s and falling, carrying less fat than ever before.
Warne’s diet, which Berry says was ”atrocious”, has been put through the wringer. ”His toasted cheese sandwiches with lots of butter now have the butter off them,” says Berry, adding that some of the old Warne is impossible to budge. ”He’s on the toasted cheese and fags diet, the two we can’t get him off.”
Campbell remembers Warne bumping into Brett Lee as the fast bowler was finishing a punishing session. ”Brett was looking very fit, like a Gucci model,” he says. ”Warney was very interested in what he’d been doing. He found out he’d given up alcohol, so he did the same.”
Losing weight requires more than simply playing cricket, a fact that has not changed from WG Grace to Warne. He had to leave boxing out of the regime, in order to protect his fingers, riding the bike only does so much, and his dodgy knee meant running was fraught until some initial kilos were lost. So Warne and Campbell hit the weights.
”It’s easy for me to say what needs to be done, but it has to come from within,” Campbell says. ”He was bowling 30 overs in a day during a Test match, then coming off and going to the gym that night. Even during his 100th Test in South Africa [in March], when he bowled 98 overs, we did a couple of weights sessions.
”It’s great to see a guy who’s going the wrong way turn it around. He’s done it because he really wants to. I’ve never seen him keener. He’s very hungry.”
As you would be if you removed the cheese and butter from your lettuce. But though Warne’s regular appearances without a shirt indicate vanity is a factor, Berry is sure the Waugh twins’ downward spiral stung him. ”When Steve and Mark Waugh were left out of the one-day side, he thought nobody’s invincible.
”He’d gone through a period, being a genius and the best in the world, thinking no one could touch Shane Warne. Warney’s a fairly self-motivated man. He’s proud of what he’s achieved, and he just wants to be the best that he can be.”
He also wants Courtney Walsh’s Test record of 519 wickets — he began the Ashes on 477 — and some reckon the sight of Muttiah Muralitharan at his back has provided added motivation. Warne disagrees, conceding that any head-to-head with Sri Lanka’s wonder spinner is a lost cause. ”Whoever ends up with the most Test wickets, be it Glenn McGrath, Courtney Walsh, myself, whoever, they’ll just be overrun by Murali. I think he’ll take 800 to 1 000 wickets.”
Warne’s repertoire continues to grow, with a ”slider” delivery the latest to scare the life out of opponents. His greatest weapon according to Berry, however, is psychological.
Berry, who shares a special bond in knowing what Warne is about to bowl before the ball leaves his hand, reckons Peter Roebuck nailed it when he wrote that Warne is ”a remarkable mix of bluff and brilliance” who could sell bricks to a nomad.
Roebuck attested that Warne had a handful of names for essentially the same delivery, yet convinced opponents he had a bulging bag of tricks. Berry says it is the genius of Warne. ”The slider and the zooter and the back-spinner, they’re all fairly similar deliveries. They all come similarly out the front of the hand and they go straight on. He’s got two or three variations of the straight one.”
Recent history indicates the umpiring fraternity is more adept at picking the ones that will not deviate than the world’s batsmen: since the 2001 Ashes series, 20 of Warne’s 70 victims have fallen lbw. There are degrees to his leg-before appeals, the most animated — which says ”surely you know that was going straight on, no matter how far down it hit him” — is increasingly successful.
Yet Berry is in no doubt Warne’s greatest potency lies in his stock delivery. ”His lethal weapon is his big- spinning leg-break, and slight variations. That’s where he’s so good — he can spin one 10cm, and he can spin one 35. As a batsman, that’s a nightmare.”
Combined with a new-found control of physique and mind, it is a terrifying mixture for England to be facing. Asked if he has reinvented himself, Warne says he has matured. He has found untapped levels of discipline, and a yearning for discovery off the field that makes him feel like he is back at school. Two companies carry his name — one, Twenty-three Red, betrays a liking for risk-taking that will never be lost — and a charity foundation will soon follow.
And of course there is ”Warney’s woyne”. He does not pretend to be a viniculture buff, thankfully, but admits the quest for knowledge has led to ”a few late nights developing ideas”.
He broke the beer ban after victory in South Africa, but stopped at one –”then I got on to the vodkas, then I got on to some red, and I can’t remember the rest”. Still, it is progress from the teenager who used to ”grab half a dozen stubbies, go down to the local park and try to hide it from my old man that I was drinking”.
Warne says it was ”belted into us since we were kids” that winning the Ashes is the ultimate achievement in Australian sport. He thinks the slightest shred of self-doubt from the tourists could prompt a whitewash, and he is primed to celebrate.
”I’ll be taking a few bottles up to Brisbane for the boys next week,” he said, as if Steve Waugh’s tattered baggy green cap needs any more stains. ”Hopefully we’ll have a few excellent nights to celebrate over the coming months.” —