The Surfer

Warne trashes his brand

In his short time as Melbourne Stars captain, Shane Warne has made self-aggrandising statements about his ability to return to Test cricket and dominate, if only he felt like it, denigrated a national captain on television and victimised a vulnerable

In his short time as Melbourne Stars captain, Shane Warne has made self-aggrandising statements about his ability to return to Test cricket and dominate, if only he felt like it, denigrated a national captain on television and victimised a vulnerable opponent, writes Chloe Saltau in the Sydney Morning Herald.
It suited Cricket Australia and the Stars nicely for Warne to pump himself and the fledgling Big Bash League up on demand. Indeed, CA, the Stars and Fox Sports pay Warne, handsomely, to do just that, even if on that occasion it made Nathan Lyon's quest for credibility as the incumbent Test spinner more difficult than it already was.
Even Warne's comments while wired up for Fox Sports and bowling to George Bailey, which conveyed Warne's thinly disguised contempt for the Tasmanian's promotion to the position of national Twenty20 captain, could be dismissed as ''typical Warnie''. But with his final, outrageous outburst at Marlon Samuels on Sunday night, Warne has trashed his own reputation and piddled on the league that enabled his highly paid comeback. Thank goodness Australian cricket officials had the sense not to make him Test captain.
Andy Bull, writing in the Guardian, feels Shane Warne made a fool of himself by reacting angrily at an incident involving Marlon Samuels that happened almost two hours earlier.
The extraordinary outburst at the weekend was in response, Warne reckoned, to Samuels's tug at David Hussey's shirt as he turned to take a second run. But that happened almost two hours earlier. It wasn't white heat that sparked Warne's outburst then, but perhaps it was Warne's raging against the dying of the light.