Warne denies retirement reports

Shane Warne has denied reports which stated that he planned to retire after the Ashes series in Australia in 2006-07. Reports in the media quoted Jason Warne, his brother and manager, as saying that the Ashes "could be Shane's last series", but according to ABC Sport, the man himself wasn't so sure.

"I might have to ring my brother ... I haven't spoken to him for about a week so I'm not sure," he said. "Sometimes the media are the first ones to let me know on a lot of things, but no, I haven't heard that one, but we'll wait and see."

In reports that appeared a day earlier in The Sun-Herald, Jason had said that Shane wanted to retire so that he could spend more time with his children. "If he didn't have kids, he might play forever, but he misses them a lot these days when Test tours take him away. That's becoming more of an issue for him. One of the big reasons he stopped playing one-day cricket for Australia was to cut down on the amount of travel he had to do, not so much cut down on his workload."

In a career spanning more than 13 years so far, the 35-year-old Warne has already taken 583 wickets in 123 Tests, and is only seven short of the 300-wicket tally in one-day internationals.