Tuesday, March 12, 2002 The style gurus have been insisting on it for weeks: Shane Warne is a changed man. No to toasted cheese sandwiches, sausage rolls and boozy nights out; yes to baked beans, mineral water and quiet nights in. It may be, however, that the change is not so simple as Warne's transition from ironman to ironing board. What we may be witnessing is Warne's transition from great bowler to good, potentially very good, allrounder.

The enthralling Cape Town Test, Warne's 100th, has had the air of a five-day rave in his honour. Trotting in hour after hour, day after day, he has been ever-present, mixing sliders with top-spinners and rehearsing phantom wrong'uns at the top of his run-up, only to startle the batsman with yet another snapping legbreak. His eight wickets and 588 balls were a prolonged, indulgent celebration of everything Warne has been.

His 63 runs in the first innings, followed by his triumph of verve over nerve in the second, were a celebration of what Warne might become. It has taken a decade longer than it should have, and you have to pinch yourself when you say it out loud. But Warne is finally batting like a batsman.

He still shuffles unconvincingly across the crease. But he has not been trapped lbw since the middle of last year's Ashes series. He still hazards those wild, woolly swishes outside off. But he only gets an edge every three or four innings these days. He still scorns the pesky rigmarole of playing himself in. But, then, Ian Botham always maintained that an allrounder must score quickly or not at all, thus preserving his energies for further foot-slogging later on.

All this is starting to be reflected in the scorebook. In his last seven Tests, Warne has clobbered 354 runs at an average of 39.33 and a helter-skelter strike rate of 70 runs per 100 balls. At the same time he has cobbled together 34 wickets, almost five a game, at 31. They are stats that Imran Khan or Kapil Dev would be proud of, stats that even the great Garry Sobers would not disown.

Then there is Warne's undimmed slip-catching ability, an asset poised to multiply in value the moment Mark Waugh loses his Test place, which could be any day now. Australia, from having gone 40 years without a quality allrounder, suddenly appear to have three at once: Adam Gilchrist, who this week graduated from comparisons with Trumper to comparisons with Bradman; Shane Watson, who for the sake of team balance should step in for whichever Waugh falls first; and Warne, formerly giant and round, now a giant allrounder.

It is unclear what prompted the transformation in Warne's batting, although the sudden mortality of Australia's two other Ws doubtless reminded him of the importance of multi-skilling. What is clear is that it is an entirely recent phenomenon. Against India and England last year Warne's batting had plumbed new depths. Towards the tailend of that period he released a 331-page autobiography in which batting barely rated a mention, other than to say that: "As a batsman I just want to hit the ball as far, as hard and as often as I can. I don't worry too much about building an innings."

Yet his reticence belies a longer-term shift in Warne's ways with the willow. In fact should he, as most critics expect, eventually retire after 150 Tests, it may be that Warne's batting career will divide neatly into two halves. After 75 Tests his record was an unflattering 1390 runs at 14.63, with only two fifties. In his 25 Tests since Warne has crashed an altogether lustier 662 runs at 22.83, with five fifties. Provided he maintains the tempo of his last seven matches, his final tally after 150 Tests will stand at: 4554 runs, average 24.22. Put that alongside his 650 or so wickets and Warne, one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the 20th Century, might be in the running for Wisden's Five of the 21st Century too.

Like honeymooners reminiscing about their favourite intimate moment, lovers of Australian cricket are often overheard debating their most cherished Warne moment. The Gatting super ball in 1993? The Chanderpaul super-duper ball in 1996-97? The MCG hat-trick in 1994-95? Or the flipper that flummoxed Richie Richardson in 1992-93 and heralded the birth of a freak?

You can keep them all. The moment that truly cemented Warne's status in Australian folklore came at the WACA last December in the dying seconds of the third day's play against New Zealand. Warne was on 99, a nudged single away from his first hundred in Test or first-class cricket. But Warne has never been a nudger of singles. Instead he attempted to recreate one of the game's most frenetic episodes. Like Doug Walters at the same ground, the same time and in the same position 27 years earlier, Warne took aim at the baying spectators beyond the square-leg boundary. Unlike Walters, Warne fell some distance short and was caught by Mark Richardson.

Unquestionably, it was the stroke of a man who thrives on risk-taking. Probably, it was the stroke of a man prone to bouts of stupidity. Maybe, though, it was the stroke of a man confident that plenty more moments of batting glory lay ahead.

Chris Ryan is former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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