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Minus pretension, sentiment... & newness

Thirty-three pages in, Shane Warne is saying: “So, as you can probably tell, I was no academic”.

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Rohit Mahajan

Thirty-three pages in, Shane Warne is saying: “So, as you can probably tell, I was no academic”. Yes, you can probably tell. It’s not difficult, because by then it’s clear that Warne, who writes in the tough-guy, direct, unsentimental style, has focused on stuff such as beatings at school, smoking, drinking, cricket, tennis, Aussie rules football…. More smoking and drinking, and brother Jason — then only 16 or 17 — coming home drunk and puking all over the house, and tough dad making him clean up with a spoon. Why not a mop? Because he’s a tough guy, we presume.

So Warne tells like he sees it, an admirable quality. Life was tough, and Warne grew up tough and unsentimental, and makes no excuses about it.

He’s your regular Aussie bloke: Simple and plain, not pretending to be someone he is not — a man who orders a pizza to be delivered to him in a very fancy restaurant. A man who accepts $5,000 from a stranger without fearing that there might be a catch in it.

But, with him nearly 50 now, perhaps it’s fair to expect him to be more thoughtful and reflective?

Warne does a bit of reflecting in his introduction, for about two minutes, and manages to contradict himself thoroughly. “Believe it or not, I’d take the quiet life over the red carpet any day,” he writes. 

Next line? “The trouble is I haven’t often portrayed myself as anything but a good-time boy, hunting down something different every week of the year.”

Then the boast: “Kerry Packer once told me, ‘Sell the blue Ferrari, son, and lie low for a while,’ so I did as I was told, and bought a silver one. Lying low hasn’t been my thing.”

This book is not a deep and continuous act of introspection — it’s a detailing of his exploits, great ones and as well as some very tawdry ones, with him concluding, “No regrets.”

The title says “No Spin”, but of course there’s spin in it. Warne is a highly opinionated high-achiever — of course he would make his book an espousal of the way he lived his life, defending his wrongs and trumpeting his triumphs. Incidentally, the chapter in which he discusses his bowling is by far the best part of the book.

Rare genius

If you loved very high level of sporting skill, Warne’s bowling was champagne for the eye. But his book isn’t champagne for the mind.

Warne writes that he wasn’t “academic”. He has never fully read a book. A look at his Twitter timeline assures you that his preoccupations are not outrageously intellectual. It’s not food for thought that he craves. His interests lie in sport, money, girls, pizza, poker, gambling, cake, apparel, endorsements, golf. Warne knows that he’s a top product — with 3.4 million followers on Twitter — and he burnishes Brand Warne with assiduity. It’s a full-time job. He doesn’t strain his intellect too much.  

Warne is rather inclined to be charmingly naïve on such things as the theory of evolution — if we evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around, he wonders. The book doesn’t force you to reflect too much — it clearly is not a product of great reflection. This is odd — the co-writer, Mark Nicholas, is a celebrated commentator and writer. Why couldn’t he draw out the more thoughtful aspects of Warne’s personality? It is possible. For instance, Mike Tyson’s ghostwriter, Larry Ratso Sloman, managed to make Tyson reflect on some deep issues in two books. 

But Nicholas has deliberately kept himself back — as he’s written in his Author’s Note, his main role in the book was to bring the voice recorder and keep the expletives out of the text. 

It’s in the “stream of consciousness” format, says Nicholas. Such a method might elicit deep insights from a sympathetic and empathic man. Warne, though, is not that. He can be an abrasive man who is known to swear at children who come to him for an autograph during his smoke break.

Third book

The book speaks to you in a familiar, confidential tone — an Australian buddy telling you his life story over a beer. Warne shuns pretension and sentiment and keeps to story-telling.

It is quite a story — an outrageously talented kid from a working class family from suburban Melbourne who is now counted among the greatest cricketers of all time. The trouble is that this story has been told before, several times. Warne himself has two earlier autobiographies — with two different ghostwriters — to his credit. The essential Warne has been brought out beautifully by Gideon Haigh in his On Warne. There’s very little that’s ground-breakingly new in his third autobiography — he’s been quite busy on Twitter and behind the commentator’s mike all these years.

Oh, he does have a regret — having brought embarrassment to his two daughters and one son through his antics. 

He says he often wishes he were wiser. Then he wouldn’t be Warney.

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