Warne: MCC portrait was altered to make me less of a man
‘‘They had to adjust the painting because they said my b---- looked too big in it. It’s true’
THE portrait of Shane Warne hanging in the Long Room at Lord’s is a decent likeness of the Australian cricket star.
However, according to Warne, one element of the picture is not quite true to life. In typically colourful style, he has claimed that bosses at the MCC demanded the portrait be re-done before going on display because it made him appear a little too well-endowed.
Fanny Rush, the artist who produced the portrait, said the story was “not particularly true or particularly not true”, which only served to confuse matters.
Warne made his bold claim during an interview on the Nursery Ground at Lord’s. Asked about the portrait, which has hung in the Long Room since 2005, the great leg-spinner – who was named in Wisden’s all-time Test World XI – described it as “pretty good”.
But speaking to The Guardian for a video on the art of sledging, he went on: “They had to adjust the painting because they said my b---- looked too big in it. They had to come and touch it up.”
Those around him began laughing, but he insisted: “That’s actually true. It’s true.”
Were the contents of Warne’s cricket whites really so alarming? An MCC spokesman robustly denied the story. “There is absolutely no truth in that. The MCC never intervenes. Once it has appointed an artist, the whole process is between the artist and the sitter and we do not get involved,” a spokesman said.
Does that mean Warne is embroidering the truth? “That is just not some- thing we would get into.” The portrait was produced in 2005 by Rush, whose other sitters have included captains of industry, Nobel Prize winners and the BBC broadcaster Michael Buerk.
The sittings took place in her studio and at the Rose Bowl, home of Hampshire County Cricket Club. She described Warne as “great fun” and said the portrait was designed to give a batsman’s view of Warne at his intimidating best. “It kind of evokes the shoot-out at the OK Corral,” she said.
England batsmen certainly found Warne intimidating, from the moment he bowled the “ball of the century” to dismiss Mike Gatting in 1993, to his retirement in 2007 – when he left Test cricket with a then-record 708 wickets after helping Australia regain the Ashes lost in 2005.
Even in that series, when England famously broke the Australian stranglehold on the Ashes under captain Michael Vaughan, English batsmen found Warne almost impossible to play. He took 40 wickets in the series at an average of 19.92.
Perhaps more to the point of the painting, Warne was also known as something of a larrikin – getting in trouble for inappropriate text messages and rumoured extra-marital affairs. After splitting from his wife Simone, he was engaged to English actress Elizabeth Hurley for two years.
Asked about Warne’s claim, Rush declined to give a straight answer. “You make a painting and all sorts of things need adjusting,” she said. “It’s not particularly true or particularly not true. I can’t confirm or deny.”