IT WAS 6.6.06 and I was waiting to face six balls from the first man to reach 666 wickets in Test cricket. It should have been a warning. “It’s enough to give you hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia,” one worried soul said putting on his pads. “You can say that again,” I comforted.

Years of training under the watch of the Black Mountains with Merlyn, the wizard bowling machine invented by my father, which has been used by the England team to help to prepare them to face the bowling of Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan, had given me an idea of how to play him. But here was the real thing at the Rose Bowl in Southampton. Warne, England’s other nemesis, lying in wait for his turn, after Muralitharan’s act of destruction at Trent Bridge.

But far from revealing the number of the beast under his bleached blond hair, Warne was charming. He even gave a masterclass on how he spins his web and how to watch his hand, for the lesser mortals. The more you see of the ball as he lets it go, the bigger the leg break, the more of the back of the hand you see, the straighter it will keep, until it comes out of the back of the hand as a googly.

Simple. But then Warne throws in the front-of-the-hand balls, with underspin or overspin — the “sliders”, “zooters” and “zippers”.

The textbooks say watch the hand, but if you are doing that, are you watching the ball? Many say just watch the seam and the revolutions on the ball. With the leg break, the seam is straight; with Warne’s straight ones, the seam is scrambled in the air.

Still hard to pick, but perhaps Muralitharan is even tougher because although his doosra is bowled with a scrambled seam, so are some of his big off breaks.

Warne’s first ball is a gentle leg break, which I mis-time back to him. But he is taking it easy and reacts too late as I come down to his second ball and drive him over his head for four. The third is, predictably, a faster leg break, which I cut to point for a single. The fourth I can see scrambling and hear fizzing with a little pique. It is the zipper but whizzes down the leg side.

The fifth, he sees me coming down the wicket and drifts a leg break outside leg stump, which I defend. The sixth is there to drive; it is juicy, it has got to go, but I must confess to getting underneath it a little. Fortunately, having pushed the field back, it lands safely for one at mid-on. England 1 Australia 0 and an early blow for the Ashes.

Warne is working. When he isn’t captaining Hampshire, he is promoting his latest business venture, PokerCricket.com, but breaks off from explaining his love of gambling to discuss how England have fared since the Ashes.

“I think England will be disappointed, they should have won at Lord’s [against Sri Lanka] and been 2-0 up,” he said. “In a funny way, it might make them hungrier. But some players are under pressure. Geraint Jones must be under enormous pressure. He was picked in the side to make runs, his keeping is probably steady at best.

“There’s been some injuries, but you have to be able to adapt when you lose one or two of your players. There comes a time when you can’t keep harping back to the Ashes. Since then you’ve drawn two and lost a series. You’ve got to look forward. We’ve won 11 out of 12 Tests.

“There’s a theory going round that England are just making sure that all their players are right for the Ashes and these series don’t matter. But winning’s a habit, keep winning. Players coming back from injury have got to play some cricket. If they’re fit by September, who are they going to play?”

Muralitharan’s success has not given Warne any extra confidence. “I’ve been pretty successful against them [England], too,” he said. “But that’s not to say they can’t play spin. I think England have improved against the spinners, they are more attacking than they used to be. But I think if you get conditions where the ball is spinning, I’d fancy my chances.”