Book review: No spin by Shane Warne
Book review: No Spin by Shane Warne
Shane Warne dominated cricket with a dangerously fizzing cricket ball in one hand, while balancing a pie, schooner and durry in the other.
I'd already read read Gideon Haigh's On Warne (which is tremendous) that backgrounded and put in context his place in the game - this book is the companion piece, Shane's story in his own words.
Luckily, his story is a bloody good one. The boy who grew up with not much in Melbourne loving Australian Rules Football more than anything, that only gave cricket a whirl when his dream of playing AFL was over, and turned out to be one of the best to ever play it.
His work with mysterious leg spin guru Terry Jenner form the Rocky montage, where he drives down to Adelaide with a slab of beer in the boot to ask for help with his game. Jenner's first words are "What the hell? You're overweight - fat, actually. You got a game for Australia cos there's no-one else out there right now. Put the beers back in the car, tomorrow take em back to the bottle store. While you work with me, there are no bars. Actually put them my fridge for another time."
His journey to playing Test cricket, despite not fitting in to Cricket Australia's preferred mould, is fascinating as are stories of playing under Alan Border (he loved him) and Steve Waugh (they didn't get on).
Cricket nuffies will love the sections on coaching with Hampshire in English country cricket, and Rajasthan in the IPL, setting out some firm ideas about how you put a team together and how team spirit and a clear purpose are more important than anything.
Being Shane Wane, equal weight is given to his side of tabloid run ins, like the time he drove two hours to get involved in a bedroom romp with two young ladies who sold the story and pics to the tabloids. He's pretty comfortable with himself old Shane, and there's a fair amount of warts and all confessional of his behaviour over the years, with little wallowing or regret.
The book finishes with a long section on what you do when you find yourself retired from cricket with heaps of cash and legend status, bouncing around from one thing to the next - golf, poker, a golden oldies cricket tour, catching up with his kids he hadn't seen much of for several years.
Ghost writer Mark Nicholas apparently put the book together from hours and hours of taped conversation - it's all in his speaking voice and by god he loves going off on a good tangent. I imagine it's like spending time with the man himself - all over the place but somehow endearing. Recommended.
No Spin by Shane Warne with Mark Nicholas
Thanks for reading - Richard
The week's best NZ sport writing
The Wellington takeover of Auckland rugby is complete - here's a profile of Alama Ieremia, the ex-Hurricane and All Black that brought silverware back to the big smoke for the first time in aaaaages [NZ Herald]
Russell Brown went to the free-entry NPC final at Eden Park and saw some hard work going into engaging the fans, with a couple of minor quibbles (mainly Feelers-related) [Public Address]
And just to round out the NPC content, on the back of a really decent season with some great storylines, here's Sportsfreak's team of the season [Sportsfreak]
The story of Nancy Jiang, who wanted to prove to her Chinese-Immigrant parents she could run, and became one of the world's top trail runners [Lockerroom]
Video nasty
Irish dad takes Go Pro to Vegas, but doesn't know which way to point it.
Long read
Four college kids mastermind the theft of some of the rarest books in the world, and how the FBI set about tracking them down [Vanity Fair]
Selected weekend fixtures
BLACKCAPS are back, playing Pakistan in the second T20 Saturday morning at 5am, timed perfectly for shooting off to kids cricket just after, it's on SKY. The WHITE FERNS left for the Guyana for the World T20 yesterday too...
The All Blacks training squad play Japan in their new kits at 6.45pm tomorrow night on SKY
Bring back the gif
When you think the kids are playing quietly, but are actually eating all their Halloween stash in one sitting.
