Pitch Leg, Hit Off

Black Rock is where Shane Warne grew up, and he has never moved far away, either geographically or spiritually. Nor has he moved from the Black Rock that remains resolutely in Australia’s past: the area is ‘racially’ white, with hardly a bookshop or an ethnic restaurant. Sport holds the community together. In the words of one of Warne’s biographers, Louis Nowra, in Black Rock "to be good at sport is to be admired...in fact, the bayside’s anti-intellectual attitude is in keeping with the proud Australian tradition that values sport over culture, gregarious physical activities over the loner’s absorption in ideas or books".

The Black Rocks have disappeared from most of urban Australia, where multiculturalism is a fact of life and sport is not the social glue it once was. Australia has changed; Black Rock is still in the 1970s. And Warne is a ’70s cricketer unlucky enough to come to prominence in the 1990s. He still lives, essentially, in Black Rock in a time when the Chappells, Rod Marsh, Doug Walters and Dennis Lillee were kings and a man could do what he liked as long as he turned up for the game and scored runs or took wickets. Most Australians have lived through an upheaval of the old white male—with his chauvinist, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, woman-chasing ways. But Shane Warne remains a living fossil, tied to Old Australia by temperament and circumstance.

When Warne gets into trouble, as he has this week with revelations (uncontested by him) that he harassed a South African woman for sex, he reverts to what he truly is: an unreconstructed 1970s man. Through his history of indiscretions— taking banned drugs, accepting money from bookmakers, violating a lucrative sponsorship deal to quit smoking, harassing women, lashing out at children who tried to take his photograph—Warne has been two things. He has been unapologetic, because deep down he believes he has done nothing wrong. And he has felt impervious, because he believes the wonderful things he can do with a cricket ball will exonerate him, ultimately, from all blame. He is reinforced in both of these attitudes by his circle of mates who play the strangely dual roles of mentors and admirers: Allan Border, Dennis Lillee, David Hookes (who said he didn’t care what Warne did off the field "as long as he can still make a ball pitch on leg and hit off"), Merv Hughes and other peers who, like Warne, belong proudly to Old Australia.

Warne pursues a lifestyle that many would call idiotic, or at least unacceptably risky, for a public figure. He gambles, he womanises, he smokes, he swears. He courts the limelight. He befriends other celebrities (and has found a kindred spirit in Academy award-winning actor Russell Crowe, another 1970s man). Warne is what he is, and will not pretend to toe a politically correct line. It must also be noted that he generously donates his time to charities, and freely signs autographs. No one can accuse him of being malicious. Feckless and reckless, yes; vindictive, sometimes, but cruel or vicious, no. In all these things, Warne imitates his heroes, and is clearly frustrated by the public insistence that he present a better role model for 2003. He pays lip service to his employer’s public image requirements, sometimes enlisting his mother as alibi (herself a creature of Black Rock, Brigitte Warne said she gave Shane the banned diuretic for which he is currently suspended from cricket; she was found to be less than trustworthy in her evidence); and then goes off and does his own thing.

Indians may not be quite aware of the significance of Warne’s cricketing failures there. In 1998 and 2001, Warne was caned by the Indian batsmen. India remains the only place on the globe where Warne has been impotent as a bowler. Of course, the reasons may be purely technical: Navjot Singh Sidhu destroyed Warne with his footwork in 1998, and in 2001 Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman showed that they are superior players of leg spin. But Warne has bowled well against these batsmen elsewhere, so the reasons for his non-performance on Indian soil may be more deeply rooted.

India, of course, is as far from Black Rock as imaginable without leaving the earth’s surface and going to Mars. An Indian in Black Rock would think himself in a ghost town; a Black Rock boy in Calcutta may drown in the claustrophobic swarm of humanity. In Warne’s Black Rock mind, India is polluted, pungent and hyperactive, the diametric opposite of the spacious, easy-going white bayside suburb of the 1970s. Indian women are reserved, bound by cultural mores, whereas Australian women will come to the bar and drink with the boys all night. When, in 1998, Warne requested baked beans to save himself from eating curries and chapatis, his very body was rejecting the Otherness, the complications, of India itself. And he has carried this onto the field, patently losing his aura of confidence in the Indian maelstrom. (As a counter-example, take Steve Waugh, who has personally acclimatised to Indian culture and consequently prospered at Eden Gardens and the Wankhede.)

Within Australia, attitudes to Warne have probably reached a point where he can no longer lose his friends or win over his detractors. His off-field misdemeanours no longer surprise anyone. Reactions to the allegations by Helen Alon Cohen, who says Warne sexually harassed her, has been predictable. His employer, Cricket Australia, has waited for the mess to disappear. Those who loathe Warne continue to loathe him, and those who support him, including the television network owned by Warne’s good friend Kerry Packer (another 1970s man) who will provide his long-term employment, continue to support him. Many others observe it as comic farce, such as the Sydney Morning Herald reader who wrote: "Thank goodness Warne does not have a video phone!"

From the first scandal, Warne has given the same answer: "Some people like me, others don’t. There’s nothing I can do about that." He’s right, though he may modify his second line into: "There’s nothing I want to do about that." Stripped of his hopes of becoming Australian captain since the last sexual peccadillo, Warne has nothing to lose. His wickets and his contribution to the game of cricket will never be taken away, and in a very real sense, they will remain his armour.

(Malcolm Knox is a former cricket correspondent of The Sydney Morning Herald.)