#180 Well Bowled, Shane!

I didn't want to visit the local cricket nets.

My shoulder hurts, my elbow hurts and, suddenly, I am old.

Warming up is now mandatory, not just a disciplined practice of the elite.

Foam rollers, spiky balls, elastic stretching bands, and a new addition, a vibrating massage gun, assist, but they don't make warming up any less annoying. The consequence of failure to increase blood flow to major muscle groups is strains and niggles and tendonitis from performing basic sporting actions that once upon a time were routine activities not requiring any pre-movement.

I really did not want to play cricket at the nets; even with a side-arm elite chucking implement.

Instead I offered the backyard variety as a compromise with the promise of new electrical tape on old tennis balls to make life easier for ageing bowlers and more complicated for determined batsmen happy to survive deliveries rather than dominate bowlers and score runs.

The lawn had been mowed earlier in the day before the winds arrived with a double-mower-width strip revealed, prompting the most regular of feedback, "You've killed the grass." Yeah - maybe - but what an outstanding first day sand belt pitch.

Wheelie bin in place, milk crate that missed the amnesty of the 1990s as wickets at the non-striker's end filled with a selection of 'cherries', and a backyard bat with a perishing grip depositing sticky residue on sweaty palms.

I strike early with a trusty in-swinging yorker bowled with an action mimicking former Test captain, Steve Waugh, which thuds against the oversized stumps.

In response I bat for ages, retiring to avoid disinterest and behaviour described as 'toxic' where an old batsman dominates a young bowler, and he is left covered in tree and shrub dandruff from continually chasing the ball to the back fence.

And then I run out of steam; I can't go on.

Tired, sore back, thinking too much about jobs and work and volunteering, which all require varying levels of commitment.

I could do with a beer, I ruminate.

What's for dinner? I ponder.

Time to provide unlimited chances for the young fellow; no dismissals; bat for as long as you like. And for this rule to be implemented the medium pace smorgasbord must cease ... it's time for a session of spin bowling.

And not just any spin. The most difficult of all. Leg spin.

Pakistani test cricketer, Abdul Qadir was the first leg spinner I recall, resplendent in my 1983/84 Australia Cricket Tour Guide A5 folded magazine.

Quick and bouncy in his action he was predominantly top spin like Anil Kumble who arrived on the scene years later with a mysterious wrong-un.

Then Robert (Bob) 'Dutchy' Holland, the 38-year-old Australian debutant captured our imagination as did Stuart MacGill whose prodigious side-spin was released from the front of his hand via his fingers rather than his wrist.

The backyard spin bowling bonanza always begins with a pause to psych out the young charge and build tension, then it's four or five strides at walking pace, two quicker steps and a leap into the delivery stride attempting to rip the perfect leg spinner that drifts into the right hander's legs and then spins viciously away off a dry spot where pesky paspalum was recently poisoned with glyphosate.

On this occasion the steps were truncated because the drawbar of the caravan (out on the full) inhibited the ultimate performance.

English writer, Charles Caleb Colton said, "Imitation is the highest form of flattery."

Well, it isn't an Englishman who we continue to imitate, rather it is an Australian, a Victorian, who dominated the English for 15 years, the late Shane Keith Warne, whose leg-spin action and range of deliveries we have tried and failed and tried and failed again and again to mimic.

Shane Warne was far from perfect. Publicly, he was a larrikin, strident in his views, inappropriate, and, at times, plainly embarrassing.

He lived for tomorrow and not in a state of regret.

And that doesn't mean he didn't pay for his numerous mistakes, rather, he just tried, if he could, to be better the next day.

But now our genius is dead, and it is impossible to comprehend.

My brother said to me that we were blessed as cricket fanatics to watch Shane Warne's career in its entirety - from being pummelled by Ravi Shastri and the Indians at the SCG to his 708th and final test wicket - he was right.

Dean Jones, another legendary Victorian, who took the catch to dismiss Shastri for Shane Warne's first Test wicket also died from a massive heart attack.

Jones was 59, Shane Warne was 52, and Victorian Labor Senator, Kimberley Kitching who died from a heart attack last Thursday was also 52 years of age.

This is a wake-up call.

Chip butties and too many nights on the grog aren't a great mix.

Diet is not always the underpinning reason but it makes a difference.

It is easy to criticise a public figure and it is easy to criticise genius because they are often flawed.

"Let's go to the cricket nets," I offer.

"Really?" comes the reply.

"Yep! Because life is too short, and I am too heavy," I deliver with a tinge of regret and a massive dose of sadness.