shane warne

Born: 13.09.1969
State: Victoria
Tests: 145
Role: Bowler
Bat: Right-hand
Bowl: Right-arm legbreak
Bat Average: 17.32
Bowl Average: 25.41

Fifteen years ago, legspin was a lost art. As teams followed the phenomenally successful West Indian blueprint of a battery of fast bowlers, traditionalists feared the guile and deceit of high-class spin bowling was gone from the game forever.

They found their saviour in the unlikely form of a chubby 22-year-old from Victoria who burst into the spotlight in 1992 and has stayed there ever since.

Shane Warne is the greatest legspinner the game has ever known, and has strong claims on being cricket's greatest ever player.

He was voted one of Wisden's five cricketers of the 20th century and, so impressive have his feats been in the years since, he must be in contention to scoop the gong in the 21st as well.

His first ball in England - spun past a baffled Mike Gatting from outside leg stump and clipping the off bail - remains his most famous moment, but his career has had countless highlights.

Warne has a Test hat-trick, was man of the match in a World Cup final and was the first bowler to take 650 Test wickets. It will be a major surprise if he doesn't claim his 700th scalp at some point in the Ashes.

Early in his career, he picked up wickets with a mystifying array of legspinners, googlies, flippers and topspinners.

Since his return from a 12-month drug ban in 2004 that many thought would signal the end of Warne as a top-class performer, he has been even better.

His bowling now possesses a beautiful simplicity. The myriad variations are gone; the googly seems to have been permanently shelved, while the occasional flippers rarely land where desired.

Warne relies on essentially two variations - the one that turns and the one that doesn't.

But it has never been more effective, or more glorious to watch. The one that turns is bowled with such mesmerising control of line, length, flight and - crucially - degree of turn as to leave the batsman in a daze, open to the zooters and sliders that arrow in unnerringly on pads and stumps.

Frequently in the last Ashes series Warne turned the ball a distance recorded as a "double-Gatt" on the official legspin scale before removing his prey with a ball that went straight on.

England may have conquered Australia last summer, but they didn't conquer Warne. His 40 wickets in the series took his total in Ashes contests to a record 172 at a shade over 22 runs each.

Frequently his appeared to be a lone fight as England reclaimed the urn, and had he been captain the result of the series might have been different.

Behind the beach-bum appearance lurks an instinctive and brilliant cricket brain. He is perhaps the best captain Australia never had.

His various transgressions mean he has rarely been considered for the top role, and he continues to be outspoken in his criticism of current coach John Buchanan.

His batting down the order is more than useful, and he has the rather unwanted record of most Test runs ever accrued without a century.

While it is more likely to be his bowling than his batting that scuppers England this winter, it would be wise to remember that with Warnie, nothing should be ruled out.