Bookmen and their myths

Shane Warne and Keith Miller have more in common than portraits in the Lord's Long Room. Over the past 12 months they were also the subjects of biographies that have become more recognisable for escapades and conquests than on-field achievement. Both men had little to do with the publications - Roland Perry's Miller's Luck came a year after the allrounder's death; Warne not only refused to talk, saving his material for a third autobiography, but told friends and team-mates not to contribute - apart from starring in them from cover to index in sections ranging from affairs to break-ups and other indiscretions. Some even involved cricket.

The no-detail-too-squirmy book genre is a tabloid culture spin-off that sells strongly no matter the quality or accuracy of the men and their myths. Miller's rumoured relationship with Princess Margaret was wildly romanticised - of course a royal flush always beats a pair of Warne's C-list tv celebrities - as part of his lifetime of philandering, which Perry alludes to during his playing days and examines in detail after retirement. In his 80s Miller left his wife of 56 years to marry one of his mistresses.

Warne's womanising has not been treated as kindly, but he has no war medals or a passion for classical music to distract the ethical eyes. His national service has been in winning Tests and the modern desire to uncover information about all of his flippers has denied him the luxury of privacy that protected Miller's status until after his death.

Where the posthumous Miller revelations were briefly awkward and largely overlooked - his outstanding playing reputation was earned half a century ago - Warne's unauthorised critique of most aspects of his life was accompanied by more front page trumpets and statistics. Week one of Spun Out by Paul Barry, a former host of Media Watch, journalist on A Current Affair and author of books on the businessmen Alan Bond and Kerry Packer, started with a guesstimate and unattributed quote from a "friend" of Warne's who believed his collection of women was considerably larger than his formidable black book of Test wickets.

"I thought at the time this was a crazy exaggeration. But now I'm not so sure," Barry writes before producing a calculation based on anecdotes to justify the four-figured claim. "I personally know two other women who have been propositioned (or more) by him and my limited knowledge of statistics makes me think there must be a host of others with similar stories." The uncertainty is the problem in a series of sagas drawn over 500 pages.

A newspaper kiss-and-tell with caught-in-the-act photographs can get the point across quickly with at least some undisputable information, but when events and theories are analysed in a full-length biography without access to the central player it can leave the author exposed. Succeeding within these limitations is not impossible as Gideon Haigh showed with Mystery Spinner and The Big Ship, David Frith in The Archie Jackson Story and Irving Rosenwater with Sir Donald Bradman. All were works of cricket-loving devotion.

With someone of Warne's present profile the writer needs more than a kitbag of nameless sources and industrious scanning of back copies of women's magazines, News of the World and Warne's previous autobiographies and columns. In fifty years the situation will be different, but now this book needs Warne. Responding to the initial extracts Warne's brother Jason doubted there was much new matter and he was almost right. The unheard of revelations are minor on the Warne scale, one even dates back to his expulsion from the Academy in 1990.

Barry has completed a lot of research - he thanks the 100 or more people who helped - but it is not enough as the target, the man he has lined up from start to finish, is missing from the action. He begins by trying to understand why Warne is like he is, but without knowing him and speaking with him it's a speculative task, even with the help of a collection of unnamed friends and team-mates.

The only conversation Barry has with his subject came during a short and tense discussion in a dungeon-esque corridor of the Gabba last year and it is the most revealing sequence of the biography. "I've had seven books written about me and they're all bullshit," Warne says after Barry introduces himself. "They get it all wrong ... I don't care what you think and I don't care what you write. And that's why I've told everyone in there [pointing to the Australia dressing room] that if you phone they're not to talk to you."

No pile of news clippings and old videos can conjure a definitive answer to Barry's why question, so he sums up many points with the help of almost certainly, likely, maybe, might, perhaps, it is not clear, it is said and probably. When asking how Warne played so well in England last year when under such pressure Barry starts with "My guess is this ..."

The tone is generally school-master stern, particularly when analysing the indiscretions - "It is hard to know how to describe the man, but 'stupid', 'hypocritical' and 'deluded' are words that spring to mind" - and diffuses only when describing Warne's bowling. Unlike much of Perry's work, Barry's cricket passages are based on vision instead of scorecards and it helps that he enjoys watching Warne play.

The softening is understandable because it's the reason Warne has mesmerised the game. It's why his spirit is in the same room as Miller's at Lord's. Miller has gone but it is not his blemishes that we remember. Warne has admitted many more magnified mistakes, most of which are forgotten the moment the ball turns with his wrist. Books like these are about cricketers, but they are not cricket books.