Shane Warne from Wikimedia – Tourism Victoria from Australia, CC BY 2.0
To lose one cricket great in a day may be regarded as misfortune…
…but this piece is not the place for that kind of joke.
Rod Marsh and Shane Warne were both great Australian cricketers – larger-than-life personalities. I was lucky enough to see both play live – in Shane Warne’s case many times.
Rod Marsh (1947-2022)
Rod Marsh was one of my “love-to-hate” heroes from my school days. Heroes from school days leave their mark in a different, perhaps more indelible way.
Peter Mason’s Guardian obituary is well writ with a super picture.
I only saw Rod Marsh play live once, although, on TV, as a kid, I saw lots of him. Latterly, as I got to see lots of cricket live, Rod Marsh’s was a face I’d quite often see around the grounds (in my case Lord’s and Edgbaston), especially during the Ashes.
Here is my report of the one time I saw Rod Marsh play live. Marsh was one of the Aussie players who walked around the ground to entertain and chat with the crowd on that relentlessly gloomy weather day.
I learnt that Rod Marsh had died early morning, before going to the gym and progressing with the rest of my day.
A Day Going Through Old Photos With Jilly, Oblivious To The Extent Of Cricketing Greats Loss
I spent a very pleasant day with Jilly Black, going through her photo archives, doing a bit of scanning and working out how we might scan a plethora of differently sized films etc.
Naturally a hearty lunch and general catch up chat formed the centrepiece of such a day, but below is one of the few dozen pictures we did actually scan.
Roberta & Jilly while at the notorious Kibbutz Afek, 1980
I had spent several days at the start of my summer job in 1980, stressed out of my tiny brain trying to sort out the sh*t-shower I inherited that was the (almost aptronymic) Afek Group.
Jilly and I had such a laugh when we spotted that Jilly had written “Afek 1981” on the photo packet. After stating with certainty that the omnishambles had been in 1980, I suggested two possibilities for the 1981 mention:
- that Jilly had labelled the pictures many years later and had misremembered the Afek year by one year;
- despite everything that had gone wrong and all the pains I (and others) had gone through to try to relieve the suffering of the youngsters, that crazy bunch of teenagers had returned to Afek the following year for a further dose of draconian discipline and disease.
I concluded that the most likely answer was the second of the two, not least because Jilly is so good with numbers.
After Jilly left, I looked at the news headlines on my smart phone and learnt that Shane Warne had also died that day.
Shane Warne (1969-2022)
Matthew Engel’s obituary in The Guardian is especially good and thorough.
I saw Shane Warne play live many times between the late 1990s and the end of his playing career.
Although I saw him representing Australia far more often than I saw him play county cricket, my favourite memory of watching him play is from a county match.
I wrote it up at the time on the Middlesex Till We Die website. I’m sure the current editorial team will forgive me for extracting the most relevant three paragraphs here, but if you want to read the whole piece you can find it on the MTWD site here.
Watching Warne ----------------------- Thursday night I had time to come and see the end of play and sat behind Shane Warne's arm for over an hour. Friday morning, knowing the folks weren't due to arrive for another 30-40 minutes, I sat in the Pav and watched him from in front of his arm. It really is a wonderful thing to be able to sit in exactly the spot of your choice watching a player of that quality bowling live. I should add, by the way, that I think Ed Smith and Ed Joyce played Warne extremely well on Thursday and Friday. The man is a legend and was bowling really well. Forget the joke runs that Ed Smith made at the end of the innings - he deserved them really; his first 100 was worth 150 when you consider the quality of bowling he neeeded to see off to get there. A Couple of Wickets and Joke Bowling ----------------------------------------------------- As soon as I got paged by my mother and went towards the gate to meet the folks, a couple of wickets fell. Joyce and Styris. It was to be that sort of day. I took the parents into the Long Room and sat them down for the famous "Long Room view" of the cricket. The match was moving along pretty slowly. 3 or 4 minutes later, I see Warney coming our way. I explain hurriedly to my folks that this man is a living legend, but neither of them have heard of him! The grumpy gent sitting in the high chair behind us makes an audible disapproving snort noise. Mum asks if it would be appropriate to congratulate Warny, on his return, for the achievements I have just described to her. I suggest that he has probably had enough adulation and will be able to get by without hers. I then explain to them why I thought he'd come off (agreement) and what was going to happen next (joke bowling), which seemed ridiculously complicated and silly to the parents (understandably). Soon Nic Pothas is bowling. I explain that he is the wicket keeper and doesn't normally bowl. I also explain that he is an eccentric who wears different coloured underpants depending on whether he is batting, keeping or training. I wonder whether he even has a bowling colour of underpants and whether he had the opportunity to change into them. Even Mr Snortnoise seems to approve of this joke.
It was truly a bittersweet. nostalgia-laden day. A really agreeable catch up with Jilly, sadly tinged and sandwiched by the sad news from the cricketing world. Such is life.