Chris, a gentleman from France driving passengers around in Melbourne, welcomed us with a “Do you like cricket?” on our ride to St Kilda from the MCG on Friday after the Indian team’s optional net practice. And, in the same breath, Chris, who has been living in the suburbs of Melbourne for the last 55 years, replied, “you don’t like cricket, you love it, don’t you?”, picking the words from a part of the lyrics of the popular reggae ‘I don’t like cricket, I love it’ by Dreadlock Holiday.
St Kilda, a suburb in Melbourne less than 6km from the MCG, is world famous, thanks to the one and only Shane Warne. At St Kilda Cricket Club, in Victoria, in Australia, and around the world, people don’t like Shane Warne. They just love him.
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And, one person who has seen the rise of Warne and yet to come to terms with the fact that the greatest legspinner of all time is not alive is Shaun Graf, the former Australian right-arm fast bowler who played in 11 ODIs in 1980-81 and took eight wickets. He was a State selector and administrator of Cricket Victoria, and retired as their General Manager, Cricket Performance, earlier in the year.
Graf still remembers the days when Warne used to come in his car with music blaring and then planning the batsmen out with his leg-spinners.
Graf reminds us that Warne began playing for St Kilda CC at the age of 17. “Shane was just one of those amazing stories. We did not expect someone to come through as a young tubby fellow to go on and play for Victoria and then for Australia, and become such a legend of Australian cricket. He was probably the next best cricketer after Don Bradman,” said Graf, who is a life member of the St Kilda Cricket Club.
Graf added: “He came here as a very wide eyed young fellow. He was a batsman, as a matter of fact. He opened the batting. He used to come here, park his car with his music blasting. And, we always knew when he arrived at the ground. We did not think he would go to the next level. But one thing he had was that he could turn the ball big and that was something that stood out. And, he certainly knew the game, how to actually set his field and understood how to get people out. That was something a major plus for him. The whole career he was aggressive, but he also understood how to set the players up and get them out.”
Graf said that St Kilda CC had planned to name a stand after Warne when he was alive and long before the Melbourne Cricket Ground did it in his honour earlier this year, naming the Great Southern Stand officially as the Shane Warne Stand.
“The stand that is to the right of Blackie-Ironmonger Stand, named after the former Australian spinners Don Blackie and Bert Ironmonger, at the Junction Oval that houses the St Kilda CC and also Cricket Victoria, will also be named the Shane Warne Stand. We are going through the process and will call it the Shane Warne Stand. We were going to put in for that before he died. I had spoken to him about the stand named after him. I asked him if he wanted it named as the Shane Warne Stand, the SK Warne Stand or the Shane Keith Warne Stand and he said ‘I just want the Shane Warne Stand’ and that’s why they also named it the Shane Warne Stand at the MCG,” Graf said.
The 65-year-old Graf still remembers the day when the news of Warne being found dead in Thailand on March 4 this year came in. “We were hit pretty hard here. We were playing a game here. At the end of the day’s play, we all surrounded the wicket, hung his jumper and his shirt over the stumps and sang the club song. It was pretty hard. I also went to his private funeral and it was pretty sad.”
Graf said that Warne played over 50 games for St Kilda and did not take a single five-for but has scored a hundred. Imagine Warne not taking a five-for for his club but he has got 37 of them in Test cricket!
And, Graf had a reason for that. “The wickets were all one-day and two-day pitches. So, spin does not come into play as much as it does for four-day and five-day matches. They were a different ball game.”
The entire country and the rest of the cricketing world looked at Warne as a superstar and the former legspinner had to be careful in how he behaved and what he spoke in the public, being under scrutiny in the public eye. But Graf remembers Warne as the one who was a child amongst his team-mates at St Kilda CC.
“The best thing about Shane that people don’t realise from the cricketing point of view is that like Sachin Tendulkar and the movie stars, Shane’s popularity was huge. He was under scrutiny everywhere he went. When he came to St Kilda and played the odd game for us, he went to the change rooms and he felt secure and was one of the boys again. That was the best part I always remember, Shane Warne becoming the kid, the larrikin rather than having to be the sort of guy who really cared for what he did outside of that.”
The changing room of St Kilda CC walls have a large photo of Warne right above where he usually occupied his place. And amongst the montage of photos of the club’s greats and their achievements, Warne occupies a prime place.
Prime place, Warne certainly occupies, not only on the walls of St Kilda dressing room but also in the hearts of every Australia and every cricket lover the world over.
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