Beastliness of Life won't trample the genius of Shane Warne

This cannot be true. Well, not even a day had passed since his last tweet. This must be a hoax. Can anyone confirm this? A string of exclamation. No way. Oh well, looks like this is not a cruel joke after all.

This was what most of us went through yesterday – a minute of absolute shock followed by minutes of dead silence. Silence in the wake of a cruel realisation that Shane Keith Warne was no more.

Shane Warne left behind an indelible legacy, popularising the fading art of leg-spin. There have been great leg-spinners before Warne. There will be great leg spinners after Warne. But there will never be another like him, the man who revived one of the most sophisticated skills of the game, who walked the talk with such resolve, such conviction, you might be forgiven mistaking him for some unruly, rebellious rock-stars of the 1980s. 

Warne revived amphetamine-fuelled leg-spin, something the world of cricket had missed since the days of Bill O'Reilly, whose aggression was often compared to a fast bowler's. Warne was not your average leg spinner, numerically or otherwise. The magic he weaved was straight out of your video-or-it-didn't-happen folder. Not only did he ace a complex art, but he made it look so easy on the eyes.

That was where his magic, his allure, his legacy lay.

Take the dismissals of Mike Gatting and Andrew Strauss. Both wickets have acquired cult status among cricketing fandom. Both have been dismissed on numerous occasions over their long, dignified careers. But mention a Gatting or a Strauss dismissal, and it is automatically assumed that we are discussing them being Warned, with a capital W. It was a leg-spin inebriated by the finger and wrist, psychedelicised by the tongue of a wizard.

A few things need to be mentioned here. First, there was a twelve-year gap between the two dismissals, demonstrating that Warne was capable of weaving magic in his youth as well as in the final days of his career. And both Gatting and Strauss were excellent players of spin.

Few have terrorised and tormented the English batters over years like Warne. He was a poster boy of post-colonial desire in an increasingly globalised world. Beating the English in the game they cherish as their own, especially at their home, was apotheosis of humiliation. But the disdain borne out of rivalry was restricted to the field. Off it, he was everyone's 'mate', a party freak whose colourful raconteur pulled people to his table, a humble man who shared the tricks of his trade without reservations. 

Warne carried an infectious, charming persona. His aura transcended the cricketing world. While he last bowled in the international circuit in 2007, his swift action inspired legions of imitators across the globe. The game has celebrated many a spinner, but Warne's name reverberates the loudest in the streets, the village, the local club, and in the backyards when a kid deceives her father with their wobbly spin.

Nobody embodied the essence of 21st-century celebrity culture like Warne, his off-field shenanigans as adventurous as his leg-spin. While for many the accompanying fame and intense commodification by market forces become a deterrent to excellence, for Warne it proved to be a catalyst. He enjoyed the limelight. He never drifted away from his animated, outspoken, original self. 

There exists something beyond the beastliness of life that cannot undo the genius of Shane Warne. He lived his whole life at high temperatures. The intensity of his inner dynamism never faded throughout his cricketing career and beyond. The artist might have gone, but his art will continue to live, inspire, educate the posterity. Cricket gave him a life of grandeur; he responded by inspiring generations of bowlers to take up leg-spin.

And when they do that, children do not choose leg-spin. They simply chose to bowl like Warne. Leg-spin turns out to be a simple byproduct of that.