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Rodney Marsh
1947 – 2022
Shane Warne
1969 – 2022
RIP

It seems somehow wrong to be writing about something as apparently trivial as sport with the world currently enveloped in darkness. It is, on the other hand, perhaps exactly the right moment to be considering things that can, on occasion, be noble and pure – and represent some of those qualities about our species which can be positive. Either way I cannot ignore the occasion of the sad passing – mere days apart – of two of the legends of a sport that still, to many, represents our human nature in one of its finest forms.

I inherited a passionate love of cricket from my mother (Father – bless him – did not do sport at all) and I thank her most fervently for that. I grew up following the game in the 60s, 70s and 80s and beyond – and then, when quite old enough to know better, took up playing village cricket in my mid forties. I turned out for our local side reasonably regularly right up until our departure for Canada.

Anyone who followed the recent Ashes series ‘down under’ might understandably complain about the current parlous state of English cricket. Though I would not blame anyone for so doing I would just draw attention to the wide variety of previous eras in which we also came off second best at the hands of those who wear the ‘green baggy’. Throughout the 1970s we were not only regularly pulverised  by the memerising pace of the West Indian quicks (fast bowlers) but also routinely humiliated by the unearthly powers of the great Dennis Lillee and the wild and uncontrollable Jeff Thompson. If they were bowling you can bet your bottom dollar that, twenty two (and a fair bit more) yards away would be the Aussie wicket keeper – Rodney Marsh. The familiar statement – “Bowled Lillee – Caught Marsh” – graced all too many scorecards.

As quoted in The Guardian the current Australian Captain – Pat Cummings – said of Marsh.

“I, along with countless other people in Australia, grew up hearing the stories of him as a fearless and tough cricketer, but his swashbuckling batting and his brilliance behind the stumps over more than a decade made him one of the all-time greats of our sport, not just in Australia, but globally, When I think of Rod I think of a generous and larger-than-life character who always had a life-loving, positive and relaxed outlook, and his passing leaves a massive void in the Australian cricket community.”

Cruel fate that the legendary Aussie leg spin bowler, Shane Warne, should pass away just a few days later. Crueler yet that Warne was a relatively young man at 52. Matthew Engel wrote in his Guardian obituary:

“Shane Warne, who has died aged 52 of a suspected heart attack, was almost certainly the greatest spin bowler cricket has ever produced. More than that, he was one of the most outsize personalities of any sport. Everything he did in his game and his life was on a grand scale: he lived fast and, it transpires, died young. Warne singlehandedly revived the discipline of leg-spin, which by the time he burst into Test cricket in the 1990s was almost a lost art. He arrived into an Australia team that had already embarked on a run of eight Ashes series wins and made it overwhelmingly stronger – he was still in the business of terrorising Englishmen when he retired from Test cricket 14 years later”.

I will certainly not be alone in remembering clearly watching on the BBC the occasion on which Warne made his test debut in the UK. With the then English captain, Mike Gatting, at the crease the ball was tossed to Warne for his first spell. The very first ball turned off the pitch nearly at right angles and, having pitched well outside the leg stump, clipped the top of the off stump. Gatting could do nothing but stand and stare in amazement. Truly (as almost immediately dubbed) “The ball of the century“.

It is perhaps the nature of the game almost as much as the way that these two larger than life characters played it that they will be missed in the UK (and beyond!) almost as much as they will be in Australia.