Dead at just 52.
Although he was a fucker against us and others, I really enjoyed watching him play. A proper artist of the sport and for me the best spin bowler ever.
R.I.P Warney. Make a coffee and a sanger when someone else was bowling but stay glued to the telly when Warney came on. You felt that something was going to happen every ball.
Just like my dreams they fade and die.
But on the positive side..............
In truth I'm as much a cricket fan as a football fan and although our test team were humiliated on a regular basis by Oz in the 90's you couldn't help but admire Warnie's genius.
But a fair bloke too, much like Adam Gilchrist and the snidey wankers that wear the baggy green now could do with some of his attitude.
He loved life and the fact that it was on the first day of a trip with the lads says it all and I guess is poignantly fitting.
In my opinion the greatest Australian sportsman of the last 50 years. He also had the best cricketing brain of them all and I'm only glad that he didn't captain Oz, because I believe that they would have thumped us even more, if he had. There have been fulsome tributes from far and wide, but the most telling are from colleagues he met in Fleetwood when playing Lancashire league cricket when he was a teenager and how he was still regularly in touch with them and helping them out. An absolute legend!
Warner, Smith etc not fit to be mentioned in the same post, cheating, conniving bastards; the absolute opposite of what he was. A fearsome competitor, but true sportsman.