Almanac Cricket: Shane Warne and the gift of hope

 

 

Bowled, Shane.

 

When you had the ball, anything was possible. And that’s as good as it gets.

 

—

 

Early December 1994.

 

I meet you in early December 1994. We each shuffle about on the deserted main street of Lorne. Thongs, t-shirts, utterly without care. I am on Day 1 of a two-month holiday. You are an Australian Test cricketer. I spot you and return to the nearby car. You sign page 1 of my little exercise book that I was to use as a trip diary. Me and a couple of mates from Melbourne heading for Mt Gambier, Adelaide, Darwin.

 

“Have a great trip. Hope you make it! All the best.”

 

—

 

Late December 1994.

 

A couple of weeks later. My mates and I lie sprawled outside the tent at Streaky Bay, SA. Shark nets in place off the jetty. Sky as blue as murder. And a battery powered ABC radio crackles away on the Melbourne Ashes Test. You bowl, we listen. And we raise cold triumphant cans as that day in our Victorian backyard, you take a hat trick of Pommy wickets.

 

—

 

Late January 1995.

 

A couple of weeks later. I lie in intensive care at Royal Adelaide Hospital with broken neck, closed head injury and collapsed lung. We’d stacked the car outside Threeways, NT. You are in Adelaide for the England Test. My 16 year old brother, in town with the calamity, approaches the Australian cricket team dressing room at Adelaide Oval. The guy on the door hears the story, and then you appear. You give my brother a message and with it you give him a signed floppy white hat. A signed picture of Allan Border is also given. That same day, the hat is hung above my hospital bed. The hat comes with me over the next weeks and months as I move from hospital room to hospital room, slowly recovering all the time.

 

—

 

5 March 2022.

 

I’m pretty sure I’ve  still got that hat somewhere. Tucked away in a bag in a top cupboard in a wardrobe in a house I’m not able to get to today.

 

You have gone, Shane Warne.

But thanks for the many, many gifts of hope.

Hope is the greatest gift.

Bowled, Shane.

 

—

 

 

Read Andrew Else on Shane Warne HERE.

 

 

Read more from E.regnans HERE

 

 

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