Warne is back for final Test (31 December 1998)

31 December 1998

Warne is back for final Test

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

TO no one's surprise and to considerable national rejoicing Shane Warne has been recalled to the Australian team for the final Test of the Ashes series starting on Saturday in Sydney. It is exactly the boost the Australians needed after the shock of having the tables turned on them in Melbourne on Tuesday.

A veil has already been drawn across the embarrassing collapse against Dean Headley which enabled England to seize the fourth Test and go to Sydney with a chance of levelling the series. Warne was unveiled before a packed media conference at the offices of the Australian Cricket Board in Melbourne yesterday, entering the room to the accompaniment of an array of camera flashlights, like a film star arriving for a royal premiere.

"I feel like I'm starting my whole career again," Warne said. "It's nice to be able to do that with 300 Test wickets under your belt."

His return is timely in two senses. It takes any heat off the Australians and enables the media to focus on the returning hero; and he comes back, in place of Matthew Nicholson in an otherwise unchanged 12, on a ground where he is sure to get help from the pitch. In seven Tests at Sydney he has taken 41 wickets at 22 including two 10-wicket hauls and four instances of five wickets in an innings.

On the other hand it has to be recorded that his first Test was at Sydney in January 1992 and produced match figures of one for 150. More pertinently, he has only taken eight wickets since his return to first-class cricket this season, each costing an average of 65 runs. It cannot be assumed that a recall to Test cricket after a major shoulder operation will automatically produce the magic of old.

He took only two wickets at Sydney in the New South Wales versus Victoria Sheffield Shield match played between the third and fourth Tests, but it was this game which persuaded the selectors, and Warne, that he was ready for the highest level again. He said yesterday: "Sometimes when you don't take wickets you think you're not bowling as well as you possibly are. I spoke to Mark Waugh and Steve Waugh and Slats [Michael Slater] who all got hundreds in that game and asked them if it was garbage or if there was still a bit of fizz and they said it was as good as anything I've ever bowled. When I pulled up fine after bowling so many overs for the first time, I thought I was ready."

In recent seasons Sydney has been even more certain to provide turn for spin bowlers of all types than the pitches of the Indian sub-continent. If England's selectors were prepared to admit they made an error in picking two off-spinners for this trip they could do worse than to bring in Ashley Giles to lend variety to the attack and to balance Peter Such's off-breaks, depending, obviously, on the look of the pitch. Ian Salisbury and Chris Schofield, the only specialist leg-spinners in county cricket, will also be in Sydney to help England prepare and it is not beyond the bounds of all possibility that one or other might play.

Robert Croft did no harm to his chances of being recalled by taking two for 28 in the first of the one-day team's warm-up matches in Brisbane yesterday. The chances are that Such for Angus Fraser will be the only change to the 11 who won at Melbourne. It would improve the chances of a happy ending for England, however, if a second spinner - either Croft or Giles - were to come in at seven in place of Warren Hegg, with Alec Stewart keeping wicket and opening, as a temporary measure.

That is a matter to be given serious attention in the next two days. For the moment the spotlight is on Warne and he looked a much happier man yesterday than the one who rushed through his prepared statement on the affair of the Indian bookmaker on the eve of the Adelaide Test.

After 18 months of pain from his bowling shoulder - "I couldn't lie on my right side at night and I'd wake up with migraines sometimes because of all the tension in the shoulder and neck" - he decided to have the operation after the tour to India in March when Sachin Tendulkar attacked him with devastating success. He has been having daily physiotherapy since the surgery as well as undergoing a regimen of eight different exercises.

"I felt sorry for myself for a while but getting back spurred me on. There's no drama about the shoulder now. The physio tells me it is stronger than it ever was. The experience has shown me how to be a little bit patient. I've lacked it all my career. It pleased me that against New South Wales I hardly bowled any bad balls. I had set my sights on the Boxing Day Test in my home town but it's happened a week later. It's been a good two days. I heard on Monday that I was going to be the father of a little boy [expected at the end of April] and now I'm back in the Australian 12."

AUSTRALIAN SQUAD: M Taylor (capt), S Waugh, D Fleming, I Healy, J Langer, D Lehmann, S MacGill, G McGrath, C Miller, M Slater, S Warne, M Waugh.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)