“My dad was playing chess on the cricket field while everyone else was playing chequers.” And with the kind of fizzing line of which his old man would have been proud, Jackson Warne, 26 years old, blond, well-mannered, open, charismatic and unmistakably the son of Shane, shows Nasser Hussain and me around the new exhibition of his dad’s memorabilia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the SkyCricket podcast.
We meet at the Shane Warne statue, which stands on the parade of champions at the MCG, alongside other Australia cricketing greats such as Bill Ponsford, Neil Harvey and Dennis Lillee. There is usually a small crowd paying homage to the likeness of one of Wisden’s five Cricketers of the Century and the greatest leg spinner to have played the game. As a mark of respect, and humour, well-wishers sometimes leave cans of beer, boxes of pizza and chip butties there, to reflect on the everyman quality of one of the game’s biggest stars.
Warne bows to his adoring crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2007 during the last of his 145 Tests
MARK NOLAN/GETTY IMAGES
Jackson remembers his dad’s everyman quality, too. “At home, he was just Dad to us: cheering on the St Kilda football club, which is the team he barracked for, poker nights, pizzas, catching up with friends, horse racing, all that stuff he absolutely loved,” Jackson recalls. “Occasionally I’d get home late and I’d go into his room and he’d be watching cricket from somewhere. I’d be a bit tipsy but I’d sit on the couch and watch him talk about cricket. But it wasn’t just cricket. Golf. AFL. Literally every sport. He had such a good mind for people; he could read people so well.”
And he had star quality, too. “Mark Howard [the cricket commentator] called it the glow effect,” Jackson adds. “He would see Dad walking in and out of stadiums and the smiles on people’s faces after they’ve come into contact with Dad for photos and autographs. He called it this glow effect and I was so lucky I got to see that my entire life.”
The Australia great is honoured by a statue outside the MCG
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This will be the first Ashes Test at the MCG since Warne’s death, in March 2022, aged just 52. He will be missed, of course, but his name will be hard to miss. The Shane Warne Stand is the biggest at the G; the Shane Warne Legacy has installed booths around the ground to allow spectators free health checks, for blood pressure, heart rate and diabetes risk, as part of its commitment to improving the nation’s health, and the new exhibition of his memorabilia is open to all in the Australian Sports Museum at basement level.
“Dad never used to display any of his memorabilia,” Jackson says. “He’d always say, ‘They know what I did; they know what I did.’ That was very humble of him but as soon as he passed, the family and the executors of the estate all came together and we had the exact same thing in mind. What do we do with all the memorabilia? We have to share it with the world. What does that look like? Our first instinct was to put it in a van and tour it around Australia. Do we build our own museum? We didn’t really know, except we knew Dad would have wanted us to share it. Fast forward 3½ years and to have it here at what he called his ‘back yard’ or his ‘office’ is incredible.”
Warne in Australia’s dressing room at the Oval on the final day of the 2001 Ashes
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There could not be a more fitting place than the MCG for a permanent collection as Warne was umbilically linked to the ground. It was here, after all, that he gave early notice of his incredible talent with seven for 52 against West Indies in 1992; it was here where he took the first Ashes hat-trick for 90 years in 1994, and it was here where he took his 700th Test wicket in the Ashes of 2006-07. He shared a unique relationship with the crowd over a 15-year Test career.
The 700th wicket is one of Jackson’s favourite memories of his dad’s career. “I was six and I was here for that game because we obviously knew dad was retiring [Warne bowed out from Test cricket at Sydney, the last Test of that Ashes series] and I was actually downstairs playing on my DS, playing Mario Kart when it happened, and we just heard the crowd absolutely erupt,” he says. “Dad used to say that was the loudest he ever heard the MCG but sometimes, as you know, he liked to add a bit of mayonnaise to any story. But since then I’ve heard from multiple friends who said the same. That’s pretty cool; nearly 100,000 people in your hometown, in front of friends and family.”
The MCG was the scene of some of the leg spinner’s most cherished moments, including his 700th Test wicket
TOM SHAW/GETTY IMAGES
About 45 pieces of memorabilia, about half the total collection, will be on display during the Boxing Day Test in a brilliant exhibition that comes to life, with his children talking on camera and some of the great images of his career on loop in the background. There is a lovely black-and-white photograph, taken by Mark Ray, who caught Warne unawares, quiet and contemplative, adjusting his cricket boots for the next day’s play in the corridor of the team hotel in Birmingham in 2001.
The Ball of the Century, Warne’s first delivery in Ashes cricket, is played frequently on the big screen and Jackson says that it is the clip he has seen the most times.
In a glass case are Warne’s shirt and boots, a stump and the ball from the match. He has written on the stump: “That Ball.” Jackson says that Brendon Julian, the left-arm seamer, originally pocketed the ball at the end of the match but when the “Ball of the Century” started to become a thing, Warne persuaded Julian to part with it. “Dad could be convincing and persuasive,” says Jackson.
The memories of the greatest leg-spinner to have played the game come flooding back for me as we walk around the exhibition. That hat-trick in the Ashes Test of 1994, when David Boon threw himself forward to take a great catch to dismiss Devon Malcolm. The stump he danced with on the balcony at Trent Bridge when the Ashes were sealed in 1997. After surpassing Richie Benaud’s haul of 248 Test wickets, he marked the achievement by writing on his boot, although Benaud is spelt with an erroneous added “e”.
Jackson has had to grow up quickly since his dad died, a process accelerated after the remarkable composure he showed when speaking at the memorial service at the MCG. “People have said what I did was very brave and that it took a lot of courage and strength but I had the mindset that Dad wants me to do this,” he adds. “I was going to do it for Dad. That’s what Dad would have wanted me to do.
“Do you know how cool it is to say that my dad is Shane Warne? I am so proud of that and he knows that. I know that and that’s what makes a lot of people really like seeing me or my sisters talking about Dad now, because we are all so proud of him.”
The physical similarities between Jackson and the young Shane are striking but also the manners and generosity. He introduces himself confidently when he greets us and brings a bottle of Shane Warne 23 red wine as a gift. “That’s what I got from him because he would always say, ‘Manners are free, manners are free.’ And the only two prizes I got at school were for having the best manners and for getting a hat-trick once.” Manners and a hat-trick: the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.