{"id":546092,"date":"2026-03-17T11:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/546092\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T11:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:32:10","slug":"sn-140-moments-no-88-shane-warnes-legendary-ball-of-the-century-changes-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/546092\/","title":{"rendered":"SN 140 Moments: No. 88 &#8211; Shane Warne\u2019s legendary \u2018Ball of the Century\u2019 changes cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shane Warne\u2019s first ball to Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993 did more than just bend physics; it rewrote the story of modern cricket.<\/p>\n<p>Drifting, dipping and ripping from well outside leg to clip the top of off, it was quickly christened the \u201cBall of the Century\u201d and signalled that leg spin &#8211; long considered a dying art in an age of brute pace &#8211; was suddenly sexy again.<\/p>\n<p>Within the cricket community, that delivery became a reference point for everything that followed: Australia\u2019s renewed Ashes dominance, the global resurgence of wrist-spin, Warne\u2019s ascent to 708 Test wickets and Wisden\u2019s list of the cricketers of the century.<\/p>\n<p>For Australians watching overnight, the image of Gatting\u2019s bewilderment and Warne\u2019s swaggering celebration became an origin story for \u201cWarnie\u201d himself; the suburban larrikin with the bleached hair and the golden wrist who humbled the old enemy with one outrageous piece of genius and, in doing so, stepped out of cricket and into national folklore.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>MORE: Back to The Sporting News&#8217; 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane Warne\u2019s first ball to Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993 did more than just bend physics;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-546092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}