Tributes paid to Shane Warne after Australian icon dies aged 52 – latest updates

• 3.53pm GMT 15:53 'He was Peter Pan … he wanted bowling to be fun'
• 2.52pm GMT 14:52 Shane Warne (1969-2022)

14:52

Updated at 3.36pm GMT

“I’m in shock, as I am sure you are,” emails Matt Bullen. “I’m just a Guardian reader: about my strongest link to the game is having attended and played for the school where the word ‘cricket’ was supposedly first used, in the 1500s ... Anyway, when I just wrote a post about Shane on Facebook, I realised that most of my pals here in Seattle, where I now live, don’t follow cricket. So I wrote:

“I can barely believe that Shane Warne just died. He was only 52. Everyone’s in shock. An Australian cricketer who transformed the precise, gentle art of spin bowling into (in the best sense) a most macho, record-breaking form of athleticism. Plus a fun, warm guy. What a man.”

“Like all the other kids I was a fan of cricket and Shane was one of the childhood heroes alongside Sachin, Lara, Dravid, Flintoff,” emails Mishu Dhar, who is from Bangladesh, and currently living in Sweden. “Today I am feeling that a part of my childhood also died with Shane’s departure. Thanks to this legend for tons of sweet childhood memories and rest in peace.”

The former England batsman Mark Butcher is talking to Sky Sports News: “A man who lived it all and loved it all, on or off the cricket field ... it’s astonishing that he’s gone, it really is. I thought he was invincible. He will be sorely, sorely missed ... he was full of contradictions, he was a brilliant entertainer, a brilliant cricketer, and a top, top bloke.”

It is impossible to overstate the excitement that Warne’s arrival in England generated on that 1993 Ashes tour. He had such unbelievable charisma. My elder sister was graduating from Leeds University in the week of the Headingley Test, and she and my parents found themselves in the same Italian restaurant as the Australian squad one evening. They asked Warne for an autograph – of course he obliged and was unfailingly polite. At my cricket club that weekend we laughed at the thought of Warne and teammates enjoying a night out while the England team were probably cowering in their hotel rooms ... and of course, a lot of that hype and excitement around Warne was due to having the Ashes live on terrestrial TV. Those were the days.

Thank you Gregg. What a desperately sad, shocking day for cricket. A reminder, I suppose, that for all the more important things occurring in the world at the moment, sport really does matter. Do feel free to email me or tweet any tributes to the great Shane Warne.

I’m going to pass the blog on to Luke McLaughlin now but before I go here is a collection of reader tributes:

Gerry Johnson: “I remember my jaw dropping when I saw that first ball against Mike Gatting and Warne’s every over (always full of variation) from then on left you on tenterhooks. He was such a part of the brilliant 2005 Ashes series that he’s always part of it for me despite him being on the losing side. A bit of a maverick and sometimes he said cringeworthy things but for me he’s one of the very best and I’m immensely sad at his departure.”

Sam Charlton: “As an Englishman who’s 31, I grew up with Shane Warne. I also regularly barked ‘bowling Shane’ to a good turning ball when playing cricket. What an immense loss to sport as a whole.”

Philip West: “So sad to hear this news. What a few people forget about the Gatting delivery is that prior to the first Test the Aussies played a few games against the counties and Warne was ordered to bowl utter dross to keep the element of surprise. I’m sure I read a preview of the series in the Guardian where he was dismissed as a threat completely. Cunning! RIP – a magnificent cricketer and an equally good bloke.”

Sandeep Halagali: “What a loss, a fantastic entertainer of the game, 25 years ago I remember we kids trying to copy Warnie’s bowling action as 12-year-olds on every Indian cricketing street, including his popular pulled up shirt sleeve. Warnie is loved in every cricketing street in India even though we have a fierce competition with the Australians. A happy go lucky bloke, may he rest in peace.”

James Butler: “I was at Old Trafford for the 2005 Ashes Test when Warne made 90 before holing out. Although I was desperate for England to win that Test I was also secretly rooting for Warne to reach his century and it was a mini tragedy when he was caught on the boundary. I loved watching him play: not just because of all the tricks, the little bits of magic and the verbals, but mostly because he always looked like a kid having the time of his life. He never did get that test ton.”

Mike Gatting, who was on the receiving end of the Ball of the Century, has been speaking to Sky Sports. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:

I’m devastated and feel for his mum and his family. He did an awful lot for people off the pitch and [charity work] that wasn’t well-known. I think Warney will always be, certainly from my point of view, No1 [in cricket]. He had everything a cricketer needed. Self confidence, discipline, and desire – and he had time to enjoy it too. That resonated with a lot of youngsters. He inspired many to take up leg-spin. He was a guy who had different thoughts and new ideas and was never afraid to put them out int the open.”

When asked about the Ball of the Century, Gatting says he’s just glad that Warne went on to have such a remarkable career as it made him feel better about being on the end of it.

David Lloyd, a former England coach and player, has been speaking on talkSPORT:

Shane was generous to a fault. He lived life to the full, he was Peter Pan, but when it came to cricket, he was serious. He championed the game. He was serious about cricket but he wanted it to be fun. He wanted bowling to be fun, to smile at the opposition when they hit you for six. He had this God-given talent and he was so grateful for it that he always wanted to help other players. Any young spinner who came into the game at whatever level, he would go and talk to them, work with them, give them a pat on the back. He was an immense character, but as a player he was top of the tree. For me, he’s the best I’ve ever seen.

And Hampshire, the county in England that he captained between 2000 and 2007, have posted their own reaction to the sad news that cricket has lost “one of the greatest”.

Just watch this turn!

Jonathan Trott has just been talking about Warne’s legacy and he is a firm believer he made leg-spin trendy again. You can see why with balls like the one that bamboozled Andrew Strauss above.

A reader, Robert Wilson, writes: “It’s astounding news, blackly unexpected. And a reminder of mortality for several countryfuls and generations of men (I feel like putting my arms around Viv Richards and asking him only to eat salads). So much to celebrate in his picaresque and operatic career. An irresponsible meteor of talent simultaneously illuminating and terrifying the solar system. The lunatic extremity of his stock ball, the four or five completely fictional new deliveries he made world class batsmen worry about every couple of years, his riotously defiant batting (defiant even when they were ahead) and the deadliest straight ball any spinner will ever bowl. But what I will remember most is early in the 2005 tour my sinking heart and absolutely certainty when English fans and newspapers chanted and chortled that Warney was over the hill and a busted flush. It remains the single most expensive sledge in sporting history. Imagine doing that!”

Warne took his place in Guardian history in 2005 when he featured on the front page of the newspaper’s relaunched Berliner edition. He didn’t have many “bad days” – he was the player of the 2005 series alongside Andrew Flintoff – hence why he was front page news.

To try and define a colourful character such as Warne by statistics alone is daft, but his were not half bad were they?

708 – wickets for Warne in his 145 Tests, behind Sri Lanka star Muralitharan’s 800 but well ahead of third-placed England seamer James Anderson (640).

1,001 - Warne took another 293 wickets in one-day internationals to crack four figures for Australia in all formats - again only behind Muralitharan in the international record books.

99 - Warne’s best Test score as a batter – he has the most Test runs of any batsman not to make a century.

8-71 - his career-best figures across all first-class and limited-overs cricket, in a 1994 Test against England in Brisbane.

195 – Ashes wickets, the most in the competition’s history and 38 more than second-placed Glenn McGrath.

96 - Warne’s Test wicket tally in 2005, including 40 in a memorable Ashes series, remains a record for a player in a single calendar year. Muralitharan is closest behind him with 90 in 2006.

1994 - year Warne took a Test hat-trick, removing England tail-enders Phil DeFreitas, Darren Gough and Devon Malcolm in successive balls. It is one of only 46 hat-tricks in Test history.

450,000 – Warne’s price in the inaugural Indian Premier League auction, where he was bought by Rajasthan Royals. He spent four seasons there as both captain and coach and led them to victory in the first season of the competition.

England Cricket tweets:

Virat Kohli reckons there was no better spinner than Shane Warne: “Life is so fickle and unpredictable. I cannot process the passing of this great of our sport and also a person I got to know off the field. RIP #goat. Greatest to turn the cricket ball.”

And Sachin Tendulkar – like many of us – still can’t get his head around the news:

Sir Viv Richards has tweeted his reaction to Warne’s death:

And here’s the view of an Australian reader, Conor Walsh, who believes Warne was rooted in his childhood. “I’m a 27-year-old Melburnian. It feels like my whole life and view as a cricket fan has been through Warne’s lens. When I was growing up, if anyone ever bowled a nice delivery at lunchtime at school we’d say: ‘Bowling, Shane!’. It was a natural part of our vernacular. He was an icon for us all. A truly shocking loss.”

It is the middle of the night in Australia so many in Warne’s home country will not be aware of the sad news just yet but in England, despite Warne’s ability to heap misery on the national team with such regularity, Warne’s death has left many stunned. Many tributes I have read sum up his personality as much as his incredibly ability – he was always very likeable in England due to his lightness of touch and playfulness.

One reader, Robert Ellson, writes: “I think Warne’s greatness was reflected in the fact that England cricket fans loved him even as he was destroying us in Ashes series after Ashes series. I remember being in the pavilion at Edgbaston in 1993 as the Aussie players came in from their pre-match warm-ups. ‘Go easy on us today, Shane,’ said an English voice from the crowd. “Aw, I can’t do that mate, I’d get in shit,” Warne twinkled back. Lovely.

Of course, Shane Warne announced himself as a cricketing superstar with the Ball of the Century in 1993, when the spinner’s drifting, leaping leg-break bowled England’s Mike Gatting at Old Trafford. We ranked it as our No 1 Ashes moment in 2013. Here’s what Barney Ronay wrote at the time:

Warne’s Ball, a hard-spun leg-break to dismiss Mike Gatting on the third day of the Old Trafford Test, is still jarringly fresh even as it approaches its 20th birthday this Ashes summer. Untarnished by its own celebrity, arteries still unfurred after two decades of richly sauced commemoration, Warne’s Ball remains a pure and entirely self-contained sporting miniature. There may come a point – a thousand YouTube montages, a million lunch interval documentaries from now – where it is possible not to be startled by the impact of that drifting, leaping leg-break (and Gatting’s trudge: never underestimate Gatting’s trudge) but it seems safe to say this is still some way off.

You can read the full piece here:

And here’s the video of that moment of magic:

The England team are in Antigua as they prepare for their Test series against West Indies. They too have been stunned by the news and have just observed a minute’s silence before play resumes on day four of their warmup match.

Ben Stokes tweeted: