‘THE WARNIE ONLY I KNEW’
AT JUST 22, SHANE MADE A LASTING IMPRESSION
Mike Whitney first got to know Shane Warne almost 30 years ago, when he was just starting to show glimpses of the cricket genius he was to become. He even laughs out loud remembering the “tubby kid” with a blond mullet who was like a naughty little brother.
“I was Shane’s first roomie on his first overseas trip to Sri Lanka,” he tells New Idea exclusively, explaining the Australian cricket captain at the time, Allan Border, asked him to take the new kid from St Kilda under his wing.
“I was 32, Shane was 22. That was Shane’s first overseas trip with the Australian team. He was tubby, had a mullet, ate baked beans and smoked cigarettes.
He was a classic, even then. And he never really changed.”
Mike, now 63, says he thought there had been a terrible mix-up when two cricket mates texted him in the early hours of Saturday morning to share the news that Shane had died mere hours after fellow Test cricket legend, Rod Marsh.
Allan Border, Greg Matthews and Mike are now the only three players who played Test cricket with both Shane and Rod, and their losses left the former host of Sydney Weekender stunned and so grief-stricken, he was initially unable to even talk about it.
“I will miss that he never changed,” says Mike.
“A lot of people forget, but Shane never forgot where he came from. That’s what I will miss about him – the Shane that I knew and the bloke who never really changed, even when he went to the highest of heights on and off the field.”
Mike remembers those few weeks in Sri Lanka in 1992 very fondly, not least of all because of the laughs he shared with a wide-eyed Shane during what became Warnie’s breakthrough Test after he took three wickets to pull off one of Australia’s most famous victories by just 16 runs.
“We found an Italian restaurant in Colombo and he ate spaghetti carbonara there every night! We were out in the Sri Lankan restaurants – and there was Shane sticking to his carbonara,” he grins.
“When you go to India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, it’s like going to the moon – the culture is that different that you get culture shock for the first couple of days. But he was like a kid in a candy store and wanted to know everything.”
Mike winces as he recalls the leg-spinner bowling to him in the practise nets one morning, hitting him in the chest with the first ball and spinning the following four so weirdly that he missed them all.
“He reminded me of that a few times and he’d just laugh,” he says. “As years went by and he was still playing and I had retired, we ran into each other and he would always thank me for looking after him.”
Shane had just started dating Liz Hurley the last time they had a night out, catching up with cricket legends Sir Ian Botham, Sir Richard Hadlee and Sir Viv Richards at Shane’s nightclub in Melbourne’s Crown Casino.
“He handed everybody a $150 drink voucher and $500 worth of chips to gamble at the tables. I have wonderful memories of standing there with Beefy [Ian Botham], Shane and
Viv – The King – until the early hours of the morning talking the s--t that ex-cricketers talk. I said, ‘Warnie, Liz Hurley?’ and he just went ‘Yeah’ and laughed. That was just Shane.”
‘HE HAD A MULLET, ATE BAKED BEANS ... HE WAS A CLASSIC!’