Human, All Too Human

Nearly three years ago, news broke that Hansie Cronje had been systematically involved in match-fixing. Hurried into action in these very offices, Tim de Lisle, current editor of the Wisden Almanack, observed that it was as if the Queen had been caught fiddling her expenses.

The news that Shane Warne has been sent home from the World Cup for taking a banned substance registers almost as high on the shock-o-meter. And as with Cronje, the first impulse is to believe that there has been some horrible mistake.

Whether or not Warne is found innocent - and you suspect he will be, because his behaviour so far hasn't felt like that of a guilty man - this is staggering news, the cricket equivalent of Diego Maradona's expulsion from the 1994 World Cup. Warne is cricket's pin-up boy par excellence, especially after losing 14kg last year in an attempt to prolong his career (and what a cruel twist that the banned diuretic is often used for quick weight loss). He revitalised legspin and made young boys want to copy him. He was one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Century. There was something invulnerable about him - the rakish charmer who made everyone forget his all-too-human flaws with an unfeasibly fizzing leg break or a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flipper.

For the moment, however, Warne's career is in tatters. We already knew this World Cup would be his one-day swansong. Now it looks as if his emotional farewell in the second VB Series final against England at Melbourne will have to do instead. A gross injustice might have been done, but rules are rules, and Warne must wait for the results of the second set of tests, which take place later this week. It is a sad irony that Warne's career might be over just when he has reached his physical peak.

But what a career. He's done the rock-and-roll (Warne was one of the first players to be implicated in the cash-for-information scandal); he's done the sex (remember the Leicester nurse who alleged that Warne pestered her with obscene phonecalls?); now, perhaps, he's done the drugs. But then Warne has never done things by halves.

So what does this mean for Australia? Of all the teams in the World Cup, they are comfortably the best-equipped to deal with the loss of an all-time great. But that doesn't mean they won't suffer as a result. Warne's power lay not merely in his wicket-taking ability and absurdly mean economy rate of 2.54 in Tests and 4.25 in one-day internationals. He had this aura. He psyched batsmen out. He made them believe that the ball was doing things it couldn't possibly have been doing. And he helped his team-mate at the other end take wickets. He was a superstar, and this World Cup will be poorer without him.

His probable replacement is Stuart MacGill, a very talented legspinner who isn't in Warne's class. Before this morning's events, Australia had two bowlers - Glenn McGrath was the other - who could get through 10 overs for 30. Now they have only one. In a form of the game that is often won by fractions, that could be crucial.