Dear Mike Gatting, forgive me for writing so abruptly like this when we’ve never actually met, but I’ve been studying that photograph of you from 1993 at Old Trafford when Shane Warne’s first delivery in an Ashes Test fizzes from outside leg stump and sends the offside bail flying over your head; that curious little “o” that formed on your lips; that look of complete bewilderment on your face as you strode back to the pavilion.

Listen, Mike, you’re not going to believe this but I think we have something in common; last week I went toe-to-toe with Warne and walked off feeling exactly the same: “How on earth did he do that?” You don’t see it coming, right? You play it over and over again a million times in your head and it still leaves you perplexed.

Like you, Mike, I always considered myself a first-rate professional and left no stone unturned in my preparations for Warne. For three days, I buried myself in a forest of newspaper cuttings and books, charging my memory with the twists and turns of his extraordinary life:

The time he was duped into accepting £3,000 from an Indian bookie for information about pitch conditions against Sri Lanka. The time he blew a lucrative sponsorship deal with Nicorette by smoking in public. The time he was sent home in disgrace from the World Cup in South Africa for testing positive for a banned diuretic.

The time he appeared on the front page of a tabloid for harassing a woman with obscene text messages. The time he had sex with a woman on the bonnet of his BMW. The time he had sex with a woman in Kevin Pietersen’s flat. The times he had sex with women who sold their stories to the News of the World.

Believe me, Mike, when interviews are your business and you pride yourself as a guy who doesn’t back down, cuttings like these are like manna from heaven and you load them into your notebook like bullets in a gun. This, I was sure, would be an interview to remember.

Tell me, Shane, you don’t seriously expect us to believe that the banned diuretic was a slimming pill? Tell me, Shane, they say you are the best captain Australia will never have? Tell me, Shane, you seem to have developed a penchant for most of life’s vices?

Tell me, Shane, is it true that you’ve become consumed by your own legend? Tell me, Shane, why is it always somebody else’s fault?

But for some inexplicable reason I made a complete hash of it. We met on a Friday morning at the Rose Bowl and from the moment he sat down it was as if he was surrounded by an impenetrable shield.

I reached for the gun and pulled the trigger but the bullets just rebounded. I tried to bludgeon him to death with a copy of the News of the World but he wasn’t even scratched. But the bit that really left me perplexed was how much I enjoyed him. There was no reason to, Mike, believe me. I’ve been in this business now for 16 years and nobody has ever been as hard to pin down.

My first attempt is in Southampton at the launch of his new poker website PokerCricket.com. His PR handlers have promised me a 90-minute slot in the afternoon but, after five hours of posing with models, bowling with hacks and joshing with poker sharks, Warne is exhausted when he finally sits down and our interview is rescheduled. He scribbles his mobile number on my pad and suggests I call him a week later.

When I do call, he’s at a business lunch in London. “Would you mind calling back in another hour?” he politely demands. I call again 60 minutes later but the phone rings out. I call again and leave a message and at regular intervals throughout the afternoon before finally tracking him down.

More dates and more cancellations follow. Finally, after nearly two weeks, he arrives on time and pulls up a chair and an hour later I’m still trying to make sense of it. “What happened back there? You never laid a glove on him!” Was it the same for you, Mike, when he tossed up that first ball and you lunged forward with the bat? Listen, mate, I can identify with that. One moment you think you’ve got him and the next you’re walking off. Howzat?! He must have been a right irritating sod to play against, Mike, but I’m just wondering if you enjoyed him as much as I did and if you can explain why.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon in this regard, Yours etc.





IT IS A Tuesday on the eve of my trip to Southampton and I’m at home taking notes from the movie Sideways for my interview.

The scene where Miles offers Jack a taste from one of his favourite bottles on the eve of their road trip to the Californian vineyards.

Jack: “Man, that’s tasty.”

Miles: “That’s 100% pinot noir.



Single vineyard. They don’t even make it any more.”

Jack: “Pinot noir.”

Miles: “Mmm-hmm.”

Jack: “Then how come it’s white?” Miles (laughs): “Oh, Jesus. Don’t ask questions like that up in wine country. They’ll think you’re some kind of dumbshit, okay?”

The scene where Jack (who is about to get married) gets chatting to a friendly waitress at dinner one night and decides to stick around.

Jack: “Listen, man. Cammi gets off in an hour, so I was thinking I’d just hang round and have a drink and make sure she gets home safe.”

Miles: “You’re joking, right?” Jack: “No.”

Miles: “Un-f******-believable. Can’t we just . . . go back to the motel . . . and hang out . . . and get up early, play nine holes of golf . . . before we head home?” Jack (putting his hand on Miles’s shoulder): “Listen, man. You’re my friend, and I know you care about me. And I know you disapprove, and I respect that. But there are some things that I have to do that you don’t understand. You understand literature, movies, wine . . . but you don’t understand my plight.”

The scene where Miles returns to his motel room and finds Jack on the bed with Cammi’s legs around his neck.

Jack: “Not now! Not now!”

The scene where Jack decides he’s in love.

Jack: “I might be in love with another woman.”

Miles: “In love? Really? Twenty-four hours with some wine-pourer chick and you’re in love? Come on! And you’re going to give up everything?” Jack: “Here’s what I’m thinking: you and me, we move up here, we buy a vineyard. You design the wine; I’ll handle the business side. You get inspired, maybe write another novel, one that can sell.”

Miles: “Oh my God. No, no.”

Jack: “As for me, if an audition comes up, LA’s right there, man. It’s two hours away, not even.”

Miles: “Jesus Christ, you’re crazy. You’re crazy. You’ve gone crazy.”

Jack: “All I know is that I’m an actor. All I have is my instinct. You’re asking me to go against it.”

Three days later I hand a copy of the movie to Warne. “Have you seen this?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he laughs.

“I’m convinced the writer is a huge cricket fan and that he modelled Jack on you.”

“No,” he demurs.

“You don’t see the resemblance?” “No, I’m not like that.”

“I don’t mean physically, I’m talking about Jack’s character; you gave a very good interview recently to Jana Wendt in Australia where you described yourself as ‘instinct spontaneous’.”

“Yes.”

“Jack is instinct spontaneous.”

“In some of the things he does, yeah,” he agrees, “but I wouldn’t say I’m like him at all because . . . Well, I suppose in that regard I might be like him but in some of the stuff he does, no.”

“What stuff?” I press. “Be specific.”

“Well, you mentioned the Jana Wendt interview . . . I think everybody should be entitled to a private life and I don’t usually discuss that sort of thing but unfortunately my wife has spoken a fair bit about our relationship and said things I’d rather not go into. Everything that I do in my life, whether it’s on the field or off the field, is documented and I don’t think that’s right. At the moment I’m single and can do whatever I like but unfortunately there are people out there who see me (as a means) of making a quid, which is as low as you can go.”

“I’m sorry,” I interject. “I’m not with you.”

“The women who try and set you up (in the newspapers) like those two already this year (in the News of the World) . . . When you spend an intimate time with somebody you don’t expect it to appear in the front pages of the newspapers — that’s prostitution as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I’m just gullible and a bit naive in that way but I can’t understand how anyone would do that for a quick buck.”

“When did you find out it was coming?” “About five minutes before they went to print.”

“Were you angry?” “Very angry, that whole subject makes me angry. If you share something private with someone and it’s consented by both, it should stay that way — not for the world to see in a paper. I think it’s shit and unfortunately I’ve put myself in too many of those situations over the years.

“I’m single now, I can actually do what I like; I’m not doing anything wrong with anyone.”

“But what about when you weren’t single,” I ask. “What was it that made you keep stepping across the line?” “I don’t know, mate; I wish I could answer that . . . unfortunately some things happen. I wish it didn’t but it did and it’s no use harping on about it. It happened. Move on. I don’t look back, I look forward. Occasionally, as I said in that interview, I’ve said, ‘You idiot! What did you do that for?’ But then I’ve gone out and done it again. Is it stupidity? Am I a stupid person for doing that stuff? No, I think I’m quite intelligent. Then why did I keep making the same mistakes when I was married? I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I did. I just did. I don’t know why.”

“So what makes you so different from Jack?” I ask.

He laughs. “I just am.”





THERE are nine planets in our solar system. There is also Planet Warne. We join him in bed on the morning of the interview where his day begins at 7.30am with a wake-up call from his personal assistant in Australia. What kind of being orders a wake-up call from the other side of the world? The kind who lives on Planet Warne.

“I forgot to bring my mobile up to bed with me last night,” he grins, “and I haven’t got an alarm clock so I told my PA to call me at 7.30 this morning because I didn’t want to be late for this interview and I’m going back to Australia next week and there were some things we had to discuss.”

Programme for Friday, June 16: Wake-up call. Cigarette. Chat to PA in Australia. Chat to kids in Australia. Breakfast of tinned spaghetti on toast. Cigarette. Music (the Robbie Williams song Sin, Sin, Sin, to get him in the mood.) Cigarette. Drive to garage for petrol and car wash. Drive to the Rose Bowl for rescheduled interview with The Sunday Times. Inform journalist that the coach is leaving for Hove at 10.30.

Questions and answers for 56 minutes. Cigarettes (four per hour). Finish interview. Load kit on to bus. Drive to Hove for the Cheltenham & Gloucester fixture with Sussex. Win toss and elect to bat.

March out from the pavilion to bat at No 8 to the usual barrage of catcalls and boos. March back to the pavilion to ecstatic cheers after being bowled by James Kirtley for a duck. Take a single wicket in the Sussex innings but lose the match. Sign autographs. Smoke cigarettes. Play cards on the bus back to the Rose Bowl.

Programme for the week just gone: Monday, bank function at Lord’s; Tuesday, speaking engagement at the Capital Sporting Club and meetings with sponsors in London; Wednesday, speaking engagement in Bournemouth; Thursday, sponsor’s engagement at the Stella Artois tournament at Queen’s. Friday, (see above).

Programme for the week following: Saturday, drive to London and catch a flight to Germany from Heathrow; Sunday, commentate on Australia v Brazil for the Melbourne Football Show and for ITV; Monday, drive to London for launch of new Dannii Minogue album; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Championship game against Durham at the Rose Bowl; Sunday, return to Australia for check-up from Cricket Australia.

“It seems a pretty manic existence,” I suggest.

“It is at the moment,” he agrees. “If my children were here with me, I wouldn’t be committing to so much; I’d be down in the park playing football with them, or frisbee, or on the swings, but they’re not here and keeping myself busy makes the time go faster until I can see them again.”

A year ago, before the long-distance phone calls and computer gadgetry that connects him to his kids, time moved more quickly on Planet Warne. And it wasn’t quite so lonely. He bought a new home in Southampton and returned in April for the new season at Hampshire with a full supporting cast of his wife Simone and their children Brooke, Jackson and Summer.

Excitement was building for the Ashes, he was signed by Sky to shoot a very amusing trailer and Hampshire had acquired three new supporters who sat with their mother in the stands and called him “Warney”, not Dad. But by June his perfect world was in crisis when the presses started rolling with a string of exclusives: a fling with a student, a fling with a TV assistant, a fling with a mother of three.

Simone was distraught and announced that she was leaving him. “He’d only been alone for eight weeks,” she said. “Being faithful for eight weeks isn’t too much to ask, is it?” The Australian media was also losing patience: “Warne’s failure to accept responsibility, his vanity, insecurity and fragile ego, have made him a liability,” the journalist Malcolm Conn observed in The Australian. “The distraction and destruction of Cyclone Shane may yet prove Australia’s greatest Ashes enemy.”

But then the series began and the most extraordinary thing happened. At the age of 36, with his personal life in crisis and his country under the cosh, Warne produced the performance of his career: 40 wickets, 249 runs and a raging debate in Wisden about whether he or Andrew Flintoff was the world’s leading cricketer.

“I have always had the ability to compartmentalise and get over things quickly,” Warne explains. “It’s no use sitting there and thinking, ‘What have I done?’ You’ve got to get on with it. In a way that’s been my downfall off the field but on the field it has made me very successful. “Everyone says, ‘You’re only as good as your last game’, but I believe you’re only as good as your next game because the next game could be the one where you make a hundred or you take five wickets and you’re back in form. I knew I was going to have a good series. I just knew.

“My cricket and my family are the two loves of my life and to go through a divorce process so publicly — which I don’t think anyone should have to do — was difficult, but I didn’t want to lose the other love of my life. I had to make the cricket work. And it was disappointing to lose the Ashes, but from an individual point of view I don’t think I could have done more and I was proud of the way I conducted myself.”

He’ll be 37 in September but the closer his career creeps towards its exit the more his legend grows. The Australian comedian Eddie Perfect and playwright Toby Schmitz recently announced plans for Shane Warne the Musical, and at least two journalists are penning unauthorised biographies.

“Muppets”, he calls them. “There should be a law against it.” The only judgment he is prepared to accept is Wisden’s. “A lot of people are sad when they retire,” he says when asked about the afterlife, “but I won’t be sad at all. I’ve had 17 seasons of playing first-class cricket and I think, ‘How lucky have I been to do something I love?’

“And to achieve what I’ve achieved. To be the highest wicket taker of all time in the history of the game . . . to be voted one of the five best cricketers of all time by your peers . . . I mean, jeeze, hang on,” he laughs. And suddenly we have reached the bottom line.