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| Wednesday, 24 March 2004 |
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SSC where it all began for Warne By Sa'adi Thawfeeq The Singhalese Sports Club ground holds many nostalgic memories for many. It was the venue where one of Sri Lanka's most successful cricket captains Arjuna Ranatunga bid adieu to the game. It will also bring back pleasant memories for Australia's champion leg-spinner Shane Warne. It was 12 years ago on this ground that Warne bowled Australia to an unlikely victory over Sri Lanka and with it begun an illustrious international cricket career which has made him the best bowler of his type in the history of the game. Warne returns to the venue he first made an impact on world cricket to create history. The 34-year-old tweaker of the ball is only nine wickets shy of breaking West Indian fast bowler Courtney Walsh's world Test record for the most number of wickets - 519. Warne began the Sri Lanka Test series with 491 wickets and few expected him to come to the point of breaking Walsh's record in Sri Lanka. Warne was making a comeback to Test cricket after serving a 12-month drug ban. Many past cricketers had predicted that he would find it tough to return to international cricket after being out of it for so long. But not so Warne. As Australia's chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns said: "I firmly believe that a champion bowler like Warne is, you just don't lose it in 12 months. In fact what I saw in one game that he played before I came over to Sri Lanka was a refreshed Shane Warne. He just looked fresh and there was zest and zip in his bowling action." What the Sri Lankan batsmen have encountered in the series from Warne is more than the zest and the zip. They have found Warne unplayable at times because of the wide variety of deliveries he has up his sleeve. Tillakaratne Dilshan who scored the first century for Sri Lanka in the series at Galle said: "Warne does a lot of things with the ball. He bowls six different balls in an over. He is bowling well and it is not easy scoring runs off him. For a bowler who has taken 491 wickets I have a lot of respect for him. You have to play him with caution." Warne has been so effective that in each of the four innings he has bowled so far in the Test series he has picked up five wickets. He goes to the SSC with 20 wickets in his bag and nine in the final Test is all he wants to become the new holder of the world Test bowling record. "If he keeps bowling as well as he has been then there is a huge chance that he will be able to reach it. I can't bowl the ball for him but I can help him out with a few more overs if he wants to bowl and he is close to the record," said Warne's captain Ricky Ponting. "It all depends on how the situation of the game is. We can't be playing with individual performances when there is a game in the balance." "We have just finished the team meeting and the theme of that was to continue playing the cricket we have been playing over the last couple of weeks. We don't make much of a deal of individual records, the meetings are based around team performances," he said. When Warne achieves the world record he will recall the day when former captain Allan Border gambled with his leg spin with Sri Lanka 54 short of victory and eight wickets in hand. At that stage Warne's career figures were one wicket for 335 runs off 90 overs and he responded magnificently to his captain's call with a spell of three wickets for no runs and, Australia outplayed for most of the Test pulled off a sensational 16 runs win which today represents the greatest revival in Test cricket. Border who is now a national selector and TV commentator is in Sri Lanka at the moment and it will be a proud moment for him when Warne breaks Walsh's record. |
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