beauty and guile in the trenches.(Sports)

BYLINE: James Lawton

LONDON: In the sea of tributes now flowing over the enfant terrible of cricket who became its ruling genius, transcending all boundaries and all bias, there has to be an ultimate accolade.

It is that Shane Warne has shared with the greatest sportsmen of any age a truth about himself that has always shone like a diamond even when his life has been most chaotic and, let's be honest here, wretched. He has identified the best of himself. It has been to play his game, work his wiles so uniquely, at the bidding of the gods. He once put it with great poignancy. "One thing I know I can be true to," he said, "is the way I love cricket. Sometimes I think proving this is the least I can do."

Through all the personal mayhem, Warne's vocation has been to enhance the lives of all who have followed cricket and felt an undying surge of anticipation whenever he has approached the bowling crease. It is almost to limit his achievement to say Warne has been the greatest spin bowler in all of cricket history. That merely implies excellence of technique and talent. It misses out on the most thrilling ingredient of all: an imagination so fertile, so bottomless, it achieved nothing less than a redefining of the game.

For decades, fast men Dennis Lillee and Michael Holding dominated cricket. Warne said the game …