How to rip it like Warnie: secrets of Shane Warne’s techniques revealed

Richie Benaud was flummoxed. The greatest leg-spinner Australia had produced until Shane Warne couldn’t explain what his successor had just delivered.

“That was different. I haven’t seen that before,” Benaud said in commentary for Channel Nine as Warne bowled against Pakistan during the opening Test of the 95-96 season in Brisbane.

Former Tasmanian captain and Sunday Age chief cricket writer Mark Ray wondered the same thing as he sat even further forward on his couch.

Ray had just arrived home from Brisbane after watching Warne claim 7-23 and interviewing him for a weekly column on the Saturday.

A former opening batsman and left arm spinner who began his first class career with NSW, Ray, who would also go on to become the chief cricket writer of The Sydney Morning Herald, had been a studious observer of Warne’s bowling and they had developed a close relationship.

Their discussions about spin bowling included Warne dissecting how he had dismissed greats such as Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara.

“Then Warnie just went bang and bowled what looked like the same delivery; it pitched about off [stump] and just went on with the arm. It was a slider [that trapped Tendulkar lbw].”

Warne and Ray crossed paths on Hobart’s Bellerive Oval ahead of the second Test a few days after that Brisbane Test and Ray was intrigued to know about the delivery Benaud had failed to pick.

“That’s when he said ‘there’s my top-spinner’ (with the index and middle fingers across the seam). ‘All I did was that and bowled the same delivery’ he said turning the ball 90 degrees in his hand,” Ray recalled.

“He said they’re not going to see the seam when it’s rotating quickly like that so it looks like either probably a wrong’-un or, the big leg-break. And it won’t spin and it won’t bounce as much as if it hit the seam, but just skid through … He seemed to have invented an extra delivery.

“Then he said stay there, I’ll show you the other stuff, so we just went through his list.

“When you see a guy that good from 15 metres away with just perfect balance and rhythm and you know he’s been playing Test cricket for four years or so, it was just amazing.”

After a day’s play in an Adelaide Test, Warne called Ray aside and told him to watch how he bowled to the left-handers, Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, when they batted the next day. Lara played a bad shot to Warne and was caught at mid-on, but Chanderpaul was his usual stubborn self.

“Warnie was bowling over the wicket, landing them a little bit outside off stump and turning them back in,” Ray recalled.

“Then I saw him go a little bit wide on the crease. It looked like another leg break but it was a slider. Chanderpaul played for just a little bit of spin, but the ball didn’t spin, just went across him with the wider angle, took the outside edge, and was just an absolute sitter of a catch for Tubby [captain Mark Taylor] at first slip. See ya later.”

At the end of the day’s play as the cricket writers headed to the dressing room for interviews, Warne called Ray aside.

“He was like a big kid,” Ray said with a smile. “‘Did you see, were you watching, were you watching? What did you think? What you think?’ And I said, ‘yeah, perfect’.”

The slider, one of Warne’s variations that looked like a leg-break but didn’t turn, also initially fooled umpires. They long ignored lbw appeals believing he was turning balls past the stumps.

With more exposure to the delivery and a little cajoling from Warne, umpires became more aware of deliveries going straight on.

Tendulkar was one of its most celebrated victims, as Ray observed during a Boxing Day Test.

“Warnie was turning the ball a little and over two or three overs he just got Tendulkar moving across a bit to cover the leg-break. If it was a bit wide, he just let it spin past him, but without knowing it, he was just moving across,” Ray recalled.

“Then Warnie just went bang and bowled exactly what looked like just the same delivery; it pitched about off [stump] and just went on with the arm. It was a slider [that trapped Tendulkar lbw]. He set him up over about 15 deliveries.”

A champion of spin bowling in an era when it appeared to be dying as the West Indies ruled the world for a decade with four fast bowlers, Ray heard about Warne when he was a district cricketer playing for St Kilda and sought him out.

“I just stood behind the nets at the Junction Oval and I watched him bowl. He was landing them pretty well and turning them but I could hear his knuckles clanging together as he let the ball go,” said Ray.

“He was putting so many revs on the ball that the knuckles were cracking into each other. I’ve never heard that with any other bowler.”

Ray wandered over to the dressing rooms after training for a chat.

“He came out with a full mullet and he had a white t-shirt on with a slogan, ‘save water, drink beer’ with some bogan cartoon on it,” Ray laughed. “He was friendly and so young. We just talked about bowling and how he was going.”

Warne played for Victoria later that season and inside a year made his Test debut. The rest is history.

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