Sparkle & steel: the complex character of Shane Warne

The first thing that beguiled when meeting Shane Warne was his eyes.

Whether it was heterochromia or charisma, they were immediately hypnotic (if each slightly different in hue) as they twinkled with intensity and mischief in almost equal measure.

But Warne's equally confronting, if more crucial, physical trait was revealed through a handshake that betrayed – without any suggestion of brute force – the power contained in his chunky fingers and steely wrists.

While the blueprint for these tools he used to re-imagine cricket was surely genetic, the means by which he weaponised them arrived quite literally by accident.

As a small boy at kindergarten in Melbourne's bayside suburbs, Warne suffered two broken legs when another child jumped from a height and landed on his back.

With both legs swathed in plaster casts, Warne spent the best part of a year relying on a skateboard-style trolley powered by his arms as a means of transporting his prone body around his parent's home and beyond, and the strength he developed in his upper limbs was transformative.

At least, that's the way Warne spun the legend.

What is beyond dispute is the extraordinary speed at which he was able to spin a cricket ball from that powerful right hand, with sensitive measuring equipment at Cricket Australia's National Cricket Centre in Brisbane confirming no delivery since has imparted more revolutions than Warne's leg break.

Standing near practice nets when Warne fine-tuned his craft, it was possible to pick up the audible hum of a ball as it left his hand and fizzed towards understandably unnerved batters.

For all the bluster and bravado that was an essential part of the Shane Warne show, its essence lay in his unerring, unrivalled capacity to not just talk the torque.

But there was a complexity to Warne's character that rendered life beyond the match-day boundaries and the insular team travel bubble far more difficult for him to control than his arsenal of deliveries he used to manipulate rivals around the batting crease like avatars in a computer game.

For all the adulation he gained, for all the records he claimed, for all the games he helped win through his ability to bowl spin on pitches often not suited to his unique skills set, Warne was stalked by the shadow of self-doubt.

In what he would later reveal as his lowest cricket ebb, he was dropped from Australia's Test team during the 1999 tour to the West Indies having battled to rediscover his brilliance after major shoulder surgery.

He then copped further criticism for his on and off-field deeds come the start of Australia's next campaign, that year's World Cup in the UK.

Having snuck home against Scotland and lost to New Zealand in their first two games of that famous tournament, Australia then succumbed to Pakistan at Leeds and found themselves staring at the humiliation of elimination before the event reached its play-off phase.

Warne's 1-50 from 10 overs on a bitingly cold May day at Headingley was hardly the major contributor to the Pakistan loss, but recent events coupled with the birth of his son, Jackson, in distant Melbourne a week earlier had sent him into a spiral of introspection.

While most celebrity athletes eschew lurking outside team hotels when on the road, there was always a chance of encountering Warne as he regularly ducked outdoors for a furtive fag and that proved the case just hours after the Pakistan game.

We locked eyes in the gloaming despite my intention to slide silently by, and I proffered the only non-cricket topic that came to mind by asking about his son and (then) wife's health, and if he had seen photos of his boy.

"No, not yet ... there's a problem with my email and I can't seem to open them," he said, citing the new internet technology which, in pre mobile-phone days required dialling in via an acoustic modem through a hotel's switchboard.

But then, after a deep drag on his cigarette and contrary to my belief the conversation was done, he cocked his head and asked: "How do ya reckon I bowled today?"

That he actively sought opinion from a touring journalist was one thing, but peering quizzically through a cloud of Special Filter smoke obviously awaiting a meaningful answer was quite another.

Warne's close relationship with his mentor and spin doctor, the late Terry Jenner, throughout his playing days has been thoroughly documented, but in addition to the technical and tactical advice Jenner relayed, many believe his key role in Warne's success was to stoke the champion's self-belief.

In the moments those doubts would close in, as was the case prior to Australia's fabled 2005 Ashes campaign in the UK when Warne's off-field life again threatened to overshadow his cricket, Jenner would be on hand to help soothe the demons, usually with near-immediate effect.

England famously won that contest but would have waltzed through if not for Warne's 40 wickets which remains the benchmark for any Australia bowler in a five-Test Ashes series abroad.

It's difficult to reconcile an acknowledged genius's constant need for external acclamation, but it was one of numerous paradoxes that often made Warne's persona as tough to fathom as his repertoire of wrist spin.

He revelled in his reputation as the suburban 'every man' who – if not for being able to bowl leg breaks with an accuracy and venom never before known to co-exist in a single practitioner – would be most at home in a public bar, washing down toasted sandwiches with multiple beers.

Except Warne rarely drank beer.

His fast-bowling teammates would amuse themselves by invoking a 'bowling cartel' policy whereby at the end of each day spent in the field, they would share a cold beer in a solemn ritual of solidarity.

Knowing Warne was no fan of the stuff, they took delight in leaving a chilled bottle on his seat in whatever dressing room they occupied and even greater mirth in removing it, untouched, after each session.

And as much as Warne could readily relate to the punters in the outer and fans who hero-worshipped him from afar, he was forever associating himself with the biggest names in rival teams (the "superheroes club" his teammates would laughingly chide) and hanging out with bona fide rock stars.

Another chance meeting outside a television commentary box in India during Australia's most recent Test visit in 2017 brought an incidental exchange in which Warne detailed his "ridiculous" travel schedule which had him jetting from Mumbai to Melbourne to London over the coming week.

"And then I have to fly straight to Los Angeles for a mate's 40th," he offered, seemingly waiting for a follow-up inquiry that never arrived.

So he filled in the gap himself.

"It's for Chris Martin ... you know, from Coldplay. But don't tell him, cos it's a surprise party."

As he ground his cigarette stub into the cement concourse, he betrayed no outward recognition that the recipient of that clandestine detail was as likely to be a confidant of Coldplay's lead singer as he was cognisant of why the gratuitous morsel had been shared.

But they were the contrasting worlds that Warne constantly straddled, both during his playing days and beyond.

He hosted his own (brief-lived) chat show, performed on stage with Coldplay in concert, and recently revelled in the release of an eponymous feature-length documentary film, while at the same time decrying gossip magazines for refusing to respect his pleas for privacy.

However, there remained a couple of aspects in which his views and his values never wavered.

The first was the deep and abiding love he held for his children Brooke, Jackson and Summer, and the pride that radiated from within as he spoke of their development and achievements, a generosity of spirit also revered by his most trusted friends and colleagues.

And the other was that, regardless of whether he wallowed in the cellar of self-doubt or was soaring the heights of superstardom, he wore his emotions publicly as was obvious in another of the dark chapters in his compelling but prematurely concluded story.

Hours after Warne fronted a media conference in Sydney to announce he would retire from one-day international cricket following the upcoming 2003 World Cup in South Africa, he was to attend a launch of his new wine label at a hotel in Watson's Bay.

Earlier that day, he had been called aside from Australia training at the SCG to submit a random sample to Sports Anti-Doping Authority officers who habitually call unannounced upon sporting teams.

The result of that test – which revealed a banned diuretic in Warne's urine – saw him banned for 12 months and prompted whispered theories he had used the substance to mask steroids taken to speed up his recovery from a recent shoulder dislocation, not for vanity purposes as Warne later proclaimed.

Sharing a car with him en route to his wine launch that evening – as he wolfed down a ham and pineapple pizza balanced on his lap and asked enthusiastically how his media announcement hours earlier had been received – Warne was very obviously in buoyant spirits.

His demeanour during that half-hour trip, and on arrival at his destination where he chatted with wine retailers and posed for photos with fans, bore no resemblance to the brooding, introspective figure he became when he felt the world was turning against him.

The one encountered in a cloud of cigarette smoke outside a Leeds hotel.

And for all his abilities to engage an audience as a television host and deliver his cricket skills under the most searing public gaze, there seems little chance he could have portrayed such a breezy persona that evening if he knew he was hiding a calamitous secret.

The greatest subterfuge perpetrated that night was Warne's apparent embrace for chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon when his preferred tipple remained an occasional melon liqueur drowned in lemonade.

But while the crowd he charmed will have long forgotten the bouquets and back palates of the 2003 Shane Warne Collection, it's almost certain those sparkling eyes and that iron handshake will be front of mind for many who raise a glass in his honour this weekend.

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