Shane Warne, the Australia leg-spinning great, has revealed he just waited outside the team dressing room ahead of his Test debut, as he didn’t know anyone.
Warne went on to take 708 wickets in Test cricket – the second-highest ever – but his start in the game was a nervy affair, against India in Sydney in 1992, having been thrust into the Test XI after just seven first-class games.
He was just 21 at the time, and understandably nervous. “One of the hardest things about this Test match was that I didn’t know half of the team. I’d never met them,” Warne was quoted as saying by Fox Sports.
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“I stood outside of the dressing room, just standing there waiting for the team to come in, because the summer before, and even earlier that summer, I was pretending I was them in the back yard. Now, I’m playing a Test match at 21 years of age … I didn’t know them!”
Warne ended the Test with sorry figures of 1-150, but has spoken of how scalping Ravi Shastri, who scored 206, was just what he needed from a torrid debut.
This isn’t pretty.
But to be fair, Warne made a lot of batsmen do funny things. pic.twitter.com/hkxlpV8iHE
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) April 6, 2020
“When you play at this level, it’s all about believing that you’re good enough and proving to people that you’re good enough,” he said.
“It’s not so much about yourself at that stage, it’s more about you don’t want to embarrass yourself. I just want to do okay. I don’t want to drop double bouncers or that sort of stuff.
“But then, as you go on, you sort of say, ‘Can I actually play at this level?’ Then I take a wicket. I had none for 150, and then finally got a wicket.”
