Warne Still a Star Turn on Anyone's Turf

This much Andrew Strauss knew: the ball approaching him on Friday evening was Shane Warne's stock delivery, the leg break. As a left-hander, Strauss could count on the ball, about to pitch way outside his off stump, turning in to him.

Strauss has told me that of the various ways a batsman can read a spinner, he prefers to do it by watching its rotations in flight. John Edrich, another sturdy left-hander who opened for England, said he favoured waiting until the ball pitched, taking a short step forward or going back so he could see which way it was turning. Others trust themselves not to be deceived by the spinner's legerdemain, watching his hand to suss what he is up to.

Graham Gooch, the former England captain who played against Warne with more success than most, also used the method favoured by Strauss. 'The shiny side of the ball was coming to me most of the time, which indicated it was the leg break,' says Gooch.

Strauss would have seen the same, the ball not tumbling over itself as it came towards him, but rotating sideways - its line so far outside the off stump, though, that it apparently constituted little danger. An out-thrust pad to intercept the ball would be free of risk.

What happened next was pure Warne. No other bowler could have imparted so much spin on the ball and yet have exercised such control that it landed on the precise spot of roughed-up turf that Warne had targeted. A disbelieving Strauss watched as the ball whipped across his body and clattered into the stumps.

Of the many things that were remarkable about the delivery perhaps the most striking is that he can still do the dazzlingly unexpected after all these years, after all these injuries, after all these dramas, after all these extra-curricular diversions, after all these pies.

Warne, who has taken 10 wickets in this match to be on 599 in his Test career, will be 36 on 13 September, the day after this series is due to end. He is overweight, had his right shoulder rebuilt by surgery in 1998 (and then badly damaged it again in 2002), has a misshapen spinning finger after a series of breaks and tendon damage, has a misshapen private life, has had his probity questioned after alleged dealings with bookmakers, was suspended from the sport in 2003 for taking banned diuretics - and yet 13 years after he made his Test debut against India he is still bowling with a poise and menace that make him the most effective bowler in 128 years of Test cricket.

The earrings, the peroxide, the gallivanting might suggest someone who is easily distracted, but mentally he is as tough as they come, this toughness never more evident than in his determination to keep going despite the injuries that have forced him to rework the way he bowls.

So how does he bowl now? Terry Jenner, a wrist-spinner for Australia in the 1970s and the man Warne turns to for guidance, says that the leg break will always be Warne's stock ball, but his master ball, as Jenner puts it, is the 'slider'. This is a delivery of subtle variations in pace and turn that is winning him more lbw decisions than he used to achieve. It has largely replaced the googly and top-spinner, whose use have been curtailed by the damage to his shoulder and fingers.

Warne's great triumph is that he has been two different bowlers - and has been outstanding as both. The out-and-out spinner is now a bowler whose strong and astute mind has replaced strong fingers as the main implement of his success.

He made an unremarkable Test debut in January 1992 against India in Sydney, his one wicket costing 150 runs. Ravi Shastri, the India opener who was Warne's first Test victim on the fourth day, holed out after making 206. By the time Warne arrived in England in 1993 for his first Ashes series, he had taken 31 wickets in 11 Tests and was starting to attract attention.

His first Ashes ball, the one that spun across Mike Gatting and clipped his off stump, catapulted him into the headlines, where he has remained since. By the end of that six-Test Ashes series he had more than doubled his wickets to 65. He collected his hundredth Test wicket in his twenty-third Test, his 200th in his forty-second, his 300th in his sixty-third, his 400th in his ninety-second and then sped through to his 500th in only 16 more Tests.

Like Malcolm Nash, the Glamorgan bowler struck for six sixes in an over by the peerless Garry Sobers in 1968, the batsman who becomes Warne's 600th Test victim, very probably at Old Trafford this week, will have to resign himself to being remembered for a moment of failure.