Over and out: Warne finally calls it quits

The international cricket arena has been Shane Warne's sanctuary for 15 years, the place where he could concentrate on doing his thing regardless of his personal upheavals. Amid the salacious headlines detailing sex scandals, lurid text messages, the doping ban, the wrongful links with an Indian bookmaker, the divorce - on the cricket field it was always business as usual for Warne, who retired on Friday as the leading test wicket taker of all time. He will miss playing for Australia, he admits it. Though his 37-year-old body, he said, has been giving him reminders that it is time to quit. What he won't miss in retirement is the constant scrutiny of his private life.

The player who entered the scene as a pudgy and self-assured heavy smoking, baked beans-eating slow bowler in 1992, has evolved into one of the biggest personalities in the game and will leave an enduring legacy on it. Warne will miss the team environment as much as the team will miss him. His marriage had just broken down and his wife and three children moved back from England to Australia before the 2005 Ashes series began. He took 40 wickets and was the standout player of the series, but it was not enough to prevent Australia losing the Ashes in an upset. He said he might have retired if Australia had won that series.

"The things that we go through as individuals off the field can be quite tough. Without the help and support of your teammates, it's really tough to get through some of the things you have to deal with in your personal life," he said. "Some of us are exposed a lot more in the press than others, but that's the way it is."

Finishing off in style

Warne finished his career with a world record 708 test wickets and more than 1,000 in the international arena.

In his final test, he slogged 71, including nine boundaries and two sixes, for the top individual batting score in Australia's first innings in a dig that gave Australia a pivotal 102-run buffer.

Then, just before stumps on the penultimate day, with England desperately relying on its last two recognised batsman to salvage something from the series, he had English captain Andrew Flintoff stumped 10 balls before the close.

He said a 5-0 Ashes series sweep of England was the perfection punctuation point on his career.

It was his first ball in the Ashes - the "Ball of the Century" to bowl Mike Gatting in England in 1993 - that launched him to international fame.

Warne said that was when Australia started to emerge as the dominant team in cricket.

"It'll be pretty hard to replace 15 or 16 seasons of your life on top of the world really," he said. Since a series win in the West Indies in 1995, "we started to dominate rather than just win.

"We've dominated international cricket, except for a couple of hiccups - once in India and the 2005 Ashes - along the way. In general, we've dominated world cricket.

"Yes, it will be hard to replace that stuff, but you just find a way to do whatever you have to do."

Warne plans to see out the remainder of his contract with English county Hampshire, where interest in him will no doubt still be intense.

One Englishman who said he would have liked to see Warne still playing for Australia in the 2009 Ashes series in England was celebrity television interviewer Michael Parkinson.

He thought Warne would not have retired if he had been Australian captain, something that eluded the legspinner during his career mainly because of off-field issues.

Parkinson said in the context of Warne's career, his deeds on the field should count for more than anything.

"The good thing about Shane Warne, for all the faults that people perceive in him, is that he's not a hypocrite," said Parkinson, a keen cricket fan who was at the Sydney Cricket Ground for Warne's last test match. "He admits to his faults and ... he will talk about them.

"I have a view that his only obligation is to the audience as an entertainer and a cricketer - and the rest is private.

"But sadly that's not the world we live in."

--AP