On Simon Wilde's biography of Shane Warne

This piece appears today in Mint, and the rest of it is here.

Shane Warne is as Australian as they come—garrulous, plain-spoken, competitive, cocksure, cheerfully philistine—so one of the surprising aspects of his personality is his love for England. It is an affection that extends beyond the gullible figures of English batsmen, who set up Warne’s greatest successes, and extends to the fans, who love him as one of their own, the food and drink (Warne is a great guzzler of fizzy drinks and demolisher of chip butties), and even the county cricket scene.

It says something for Warne’s divided allegiances that, although he has retired from international and Australian domestic cricket, he still plays for Hampshire in England and proudly leads the team. The English media is just as devoted to Warne, with the broadsheets closely tracking his on-field deeds and the tabloids sniffing out every lurid detail of his off-the-pitch shenanigans. Even the two extant Warne biographies, of which Simon Wilde’s new book is one, are written by British journalists....

Other posts on cricket books and cricket: on Gideon Haigh's All Out, which has some matchless descriptions of Warne, on the best Indian cricket writing, and "Some thoughts on playing cricket at The Oval".