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When Craig Chambers makes his way into the MCG for the Shane Warne memorial service tonight, he will have spent almost a month sifting through personal memories of a man he describes as "just an all-round good fella".
As a teenager, Chambers was the scorer for Mentone Grammar's 1st Eleven for the 1986-87 season, when Warne led the team to the Associated Grammar Schools cricket premiership.
"I was a sports nuffie and I wanted to be involved," Chambers says.
Scorers are among the least exulted fixtures of grassroots cricket, but Chambers remembers that Warne "appreciated everyone who was on the journey with him."
Warne's appreciation went above and beyond.
"They were 65-over-a-side games, and I'd be stuck on the other side of the ground in the scoreboard," Chambers says.
"Because I've got cerebral palsy, it would have taken me 15 minutes to walk across the ground for lunch.
"Shane would say, 'hang on, I've gotta pick Craig up'. He'd get in his Ford Cortina, drive around the ground to pick me up, and drive back around for lunch. He was making sure I had the most amount of time possible to have lunch. He was a mate's mate. If you were in his circle, you knew it. He didn't think he was better than anyone. He respected me as a scorer and always included me.
"Since finishing school, when he was doing signings of books or DVDs, whenever he saw me he'd make a point of coming over and checking in and connecting about old times and our shared experiences. He was just a very down-to-earth, charismatic person who didn't get ahead of himself."
Chambers was on a train home from Geelong when he heard the news of his mate's death and it left him in disbelief.
Three days later, a DVD arrived in the mail — Warne's recently-released documentary.
"It was a bittersweet moment," he says.
"It's something that I'll always treasure. We did this thing together, you know?"
Likewise Wayne Fuller, Warne's spin bowling partner that year at Mentone and now the curator at the school's Keysborough playing fields, where the pair often wrecked the afternoons of AGS batsmen.
Fuller took 18 wickets at 8.12 that season, pipping Warne for the bowling average (the Test great took 32 at 11.84).
"I was very fortunate," Fuller says.
"The batsmen wanted to go after me because they couldn't play Shane.
"You were in awe of him a little bit. But even when he got to the elite level, we still saw him as Shane who we went to school with. He was the greatest leg-spin bowler in the world, but he had time for everyone."
With Chambers, he will be among a group of Mentone old boys honouring an old mate at the MCG. Like Chambers, Fuller has struggled with the finality of losing a mate who seemed immortal.
Via social media and WhatsApp, members of the Mentone team have reconnected and rallied around each other.
"We're all calling each other and making sure we get health checks and looking after each other," Fuller says.
"All our old photos are coming out and the scorebooks for our premiership team. They're great memories. But it's just dreadful.
"I went home that Saturday and I was just numb.
He will now treasure his last moments with Warne.
"I was at Southland a few years ago and saw a queue of about 150 people, and I walked by a little later and Shane was sitting by himself at a table. We caught up for half an hour, but he would have been happy to sit there all day," he says.
"We're gonna miss him. We were hoping to have our cricket reunion dinner next year and reminisce, but unfortunately a great skipper and a great man is now gone. We played for Shane and we played for Barrie Irons."
'Shane thought it could be done'
Barrie Irons was the coach of the Mentone Grammar team in 1986-87 — his first year at the school after relocating from South Africa, and Warne's last. Warne was actually the school's second-choice captain, the first having left the school after one game.
"I think some of the staff were a bit surprised that I made Shane captain," Irons says.
"But he was absolutely brilliant as a captain. He was all about winning the game as quickly as you possibly could. That was a huge strength.
"It was such a pity he never ended up captain of the Australian Test team, but mobile phones probably cost him that."
Irons would love to be at the MCG with the special group of players who were bonded by their success, but with an already-delayed family wedding a week away in Tasmania, he can't afford to play Russian roulette on a quick trip with COVID-19 still circulating.
His dilemma creates a bookend to his relationship with Warne: back in that halcyon summer of Warne's youth, Irons was interstate for another wedding and missed a single game of his team's season — the one in which Warne did what was considered unthinkable in schoolboy cricket, taking 10 wickets and conjuring an outright victory against Marcellin.
"Shane was always talking about winning games outright, which in those 65-over AGS games was outrageous," Irons says.
"He'd say, 'listen, if we declare at 250, we can roll them twice.' And he actually did that very thing. We had two games won outright, purely and simply because Shane thought it could be done. None of us did, but he did. I can still see him in the team meetings saying 'we can beat them outright'."
Irons thinks there is a misconception that Warne was not a polished bowler when he left the school and lobbed at St Kilda Cricket Club, beginning his climb to greatness.
"People say he only became a leg-spinner later," Irons says.
"That's rubbish. I saw him when he was 16, 17, and my colleague John Mason saw him a few years before, and he was already a very, very good leg-spinner. He was just absolutely deadly accurate, spun the ball and had a really good wrong'un.
"Even then, I thought 'this kid could go the whole way'."
As a student, too, Irons says Warne was a little more committed than he liked to make out.
"I actually taught Shane accounting and he was absolutely meticulously neat and organised," Irons says.
"He didn't do particularly well, but he liked getting things right."
Among the lighter moments, Irons recalls a trip to McDonalds on the way home from a game at Assumption College.
"Shane bought a Big Mac, promptly took all the lettuce and good things out and put chips inside instead," he says.
"The lettuce had no place in his diet at all."
In the years that followed Warne's graduation, Irons says a few moments stuck out as pointers to what would follow.
The first came when Warne reminded him of a rare loss Mentone had suffered in a knockout game. The players were bitterly disappointed, but Irons — raised on the gentlemanly cricket of his home country, where only the bowler would appeal to the umpire — gathered the Mentone players together and instructed them to lose with good grace. Warne later said he hadn't forgotten it.
The other occurred when Warne was battling away as a third-grader in Melbourne district cricket.
"We had a beer one night and had this discussion," Irons says.
"Shane said, 'you know there is a gap in the Australian team for a good leg-spinner?'. I thought, that's interesting.
"Even then, as a young guy, in his mind he felt he was good enough to play in the Australian team within a few years. He hadn't played for Victoria yet, but he was very confident about his ability to play at the top level. It was extraordinary. I really enjoyed that side of him.
"When you look back at his highlights, there were so many games he pulled out of the fire because of that belief — that it could be done. And it was incredible how often that happened."
For Irons, it is still hard to believe that Warne is gone.
"It's just absolutely awful," he says.
"I just feel so hollow. He had an amazing capacity to relate to people. You think to yourself, how could a man like that no longer be here?"
'He always remembered his local mates'
Two Sundays ago, Warne's life in sport came full circle as mourners gathered for a private funeral at St Kilda Football Club's Moorabbin base.
It was the ground at which Warne thought he'd forge a career kicking the Sherrin, before fate intervened.
Steve Grace was Warne's St Kilda under-19s captain in 1988. In recent weeks, the Moorabbin moments he finds himself recalling most clearly involve laughter and joy — the attributes that Warne's footy teammates treasured as much as his deadly accurate kicking and relish for a physical contest.
"One of great qualities, even back then, was that he could laugh at himself," Grace says.
"He was very talented and skilful. He had the ability to kick a bag. But my main memory is the laughter.
"I specifically remember him this one day in the rooms down at Moorabbin. It was a pretty big game for us, because we were mid-table and struggling to hold on before finals came around.
"He had this big smile on his face, laughing away, until the coach Darryl Nisbet walked in. I can't remember Daryl's exact words but it was something to the tune of 'Turn that shit off'. I was captain, so half of me was telling Warnie to pull his head in and the other half of me was always laughing at him."
Here the Ford Cortina came into play again. Warne used it to ferry teammates around town to all the Melbourne nightspots that have since perished — the Undergorund, The Ritz, Hot Gossip.
"On Thursday nights we'd train and have selection, then we'd be out with whoever drove," Grace says.
"It was often Warnie in that cream, stick-shift Cortina, or myself in a little Suzuki, and we'd be off for more laughs. He was always disarming you with a stupid comment or taking the mickey out of himself.
"And he always remembered his local mates."
Warne the footballer, Grace says, was not the failure he painted himself as.
"He certainly had the ability, he just didn't have the aerobic fitness for repeat efforts," Grace says.
"There was certainly no full-ground press in those days. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes if that was in. But he didn't need many touches to make an impact on the game.
"He was a beautiful kick. And he had a crack. There were many games where we needed something from the more experienced players, or we needed a little bit of a spark and some aggression shown, and Warnie certainly wasn't backward in coming forward.
Warne's St Kilda contemporaries are now faced with the unwelcome task of organising reunions without their brightest star present. The Saints players staged one two years ago, but Warne missed due to overseas commentary commitments.
"He swore he'd be at the next one with us, because he didn't forget his roots," Grace says.
Now it'll take place at Warne's memorial, tinged with overwhelming sadness.
"It hit me like a bit of a brick wall when I heard the news," Grace says.
"I was just in shock. He was such a mainstay of Australian sporting life, and if you lived bayside and knew him since he was young, like I did, it just feels a bit surreal."
"Almost daily, I walk past his parents' old house on Beach road, opposite Half Moon Bay, and it's just very sad. People around this area feel like they knew him well because he was so personable. Everyone thought they had a piece of him. That was part of his charm."
'He was like everyone's mate'
Just as Melburnians have paid tribute to Warne by leaving flowers by the great cricketer's statue on the outskirts of the MCG, Londoners might now pause a little longer by Warne's portrait at Lord's.
Since its unveiling during the magical Ashes summer of 2005, it has been among the most popular attractions on the walls of the Marylebone Cricket Club. In recent weeks, it was moved to the MCC's committee room and adorned with a black rosette as a mark of respect.
Such mournful deliberations sit somewhat at odds with the man and certainly with the story of the painting. Warne being Warne, it was launched amid a tabloid frenzy with a salacious angle — that artist Fanny Rush had been asked by the MCC to re-touch a certain section of the painting best summarised by the Daily Mirror headline: 'So were his googlies too large?'
Rush and Warne played along, to a point.
"It wasn't true," Rush says from her London studio.
"I just painted exactly what was there."
She can see now that the hours she spent with cricketing great as her warm and obliging sitter were remarkable on many levels: the sessions occurred during what turned out to be the most wondrous English Ashes summer of the modern age; Rush was capturing Warne in the midst of his 40-wicket tear — achieved against the odds as his marriage ended; time was of an essence.
"He was like everyone's mate," Rush says.
"We just adored Shane Warne. That summer, it was Warne's summer, even though England were winning. Everywhere you looked, people were playing cricket. Boys in the street were playing cricket, not kicking soccer balls. Just that summer.
"It was great foresight by the MCC to paint Warne while he was still an active player. Normally, they don't paint cricketers until the end of their career, in case they really mess up and there is a huge scandal."
Far from the tabloid image, she found Warne charming and respectful.
"I liked him very much," Rush says.
"He was very warm. I instantly liked him. We were quick, easy friends. And I also felt very respected by him, because I was doing something he couldn't do, whereas he did something nobody else in the world could do. He asked a lot of questions. He was patient. He was genuinely interested in what I was doing and how I was doing it.
"And I think he liked women. I don't just mean sexually. I think he genuinely liked women. He was quite flirtatious but I don't think it was because he fancied me, I think it was because he was very at ease with women."
Perhaps, too, Warne saw a kindred spirit.
Just as his own calling cards were a maverick, untameable talent and the force of personality to reinvent an ancient art, Rush was a self-taught rule-breaker, influenced by the old masters but bolder in her use of colour and unexpected influences.
The success of the painting came down to her first meeting with Warne, on the playing field at Hampshire's Rose Bowl. She arrived to take the first reference photos with a few concerns in her head. Was this just another obligation Warne had to endure? Would he 'get it'?
The concept was simple: Warne in that pregnant pause at the top of his mark, tossing the ball gently in the air but playing on the batsman's mind, a grinning predator. Rush wanted to recreate the batsman's sense of dread but not lose Warne's charisma.
"And it was important that it wasn't static," Rush says.
"I didn't want him just standing there. We went out onto the ground to take the photographs and he was walking towards me and I was having to walk backwards really fast with my camera. It was ridiculous, because I was slipping all over the place. So, I kicked off my shoes and started taking them.
"Because I was being creative and telling him what to do, I suddenly saw him switch to thinking 'this person is actually quite fun'. It was like he realised we were doing something fun. Suddenly it switched and we became friends. He understood I was somebody who didn't care about looking silly. It was about getting the right shot."
At the converted gasworks in Fulham that served as studios to Rush and other artists, Warne caused a frenzy when he arrived for sittings.
"Everybody came out of their studios and surrounded him," she says.
"My cred around the studios was never forgotten."
And Warne evidently loved the result. When his illustrated autobiography was published, it contained only one photo of a non-relative female: Rush, standing with Warne in front of the portrait.
"Portrait painting is biography," Rush says.
"With Warne, you get the menace, but it's not a menacing portrait. You've also got the man — the twinkle in the eye and the fun. It's the most popular portrait at Lord's, and I don't think that's because of me. It's because of Shane. Of course it's because of Shane. It's not a stuffy portrait at all. It's fun.
Like all portrait artists, Rush knew her work would eventually outlive its subject, but she was still saddened by the prematurity of Warne's death and found herself searching for positives: "He won't get old and ugly. He won't have pain in his joints from all the over-use in his youth.
"But that sounds awful, doesn't it? I think he would have been a great old man. He had a lot to give. I'm really sad for his children. They must have been so proud of him."
Credits
- Reporting: Russell Jackson
- Photography: Luke Bowden
- Digital production: Kyle Pollard