Shane
English (Documentary/Hotstar)
Directors: David Alrich, Jon Carey, Jackie Munro
4/5
A man no more was once beautiful. And in the middle lies the story of the greatest leg-spinner the world has ever seen. Shane Warne was his name, and you best believe that they don’t make them like him anymore.
‘Shane’, the documentary, allows this realisation to remain suspended in the gullet long enough, more so because the man himself passed away tragically last month.
But while he sits there in the flesh — the documentary was released in January — with his right eye coloured blue and his left a shade of amber, he’s mesmerising even if the tempo of the documentary is a tad lethargic.
For 90-odd minutes you’re stuck in a time loop, recalling memories of the man and your whereabouts when he was unfurling greatness. With that inexplicable magic came the controversies, the affairs, the dancing, the sledging, the beers, the cigarettes, the poker, the commentary, the hair, the gold chain… the ball of the century.
Obviously enough, a close-up of Mike Gatting’s befuddled face is where this story begins. Frankly, it’s still side-splitting to watch Gatting’s reaction to that delivery, and you can see that the England great is still hurting when he comes on to recount the moment for the documentary.
In that regard, the filmmakers have done well to bring on a number of cricketers, Australian Football League stars, Grammy-winning musicians and so on to describe the pantomime orchestrated by Warne.
But they could have held back on a few of these high-profile folk for they offered little to accentuate a moment or amplify the tale. Perhaps the lack of footage forced them in this direction since rights to cricket videos aren’t easy to buy off the shelf.
Should you be okay with a fair bit of repetition when it comes to iconic dismissals — he did have a fair few of those out of the 708 Test scalps — you’re in for quite the trip down yellow brick road.
Sure, there will be the inevitable element of posthumous pandering on part of a viewer, especially if you are a contemporary to his spells. Even that levy, fortunately, doesn’t take away from the quality of editing or the delicate use of background score. If anything, all these components organically melt into each other to provide a wholesome take on cricket’s first real enfant terrible.
Warne says it best: ‘I liked loud music, I smoked, I drank and I bowled a bit of leg-spin. That was sort of me.’
Evidently, his relationship with humility had evolved, but in the 90s and spilling into the mid-2000s, he was the farthest from humble. He knew he was a weapon, one which was draped in an unapologetic ruthlessness and intimidation. He was moulded by an archetypal hard-hat Aussie spirit, furthered only by rejections he had faced as a teenager.
Warne had a point to prove, and so he sold his soul to the game and lost parts of his family and himself in the bargain. To this, there’s a great regret in his eyes and a tragic pain in those he calls family as they speak beyond cricket. But there’s still a love there, and it’s beautifully portrayed through his younger brother, his ex-wife, his three children and his proud parents. Friends come and offer their bits, but they hold no candle to the unsaid intimacy of kin.
The makers have captured it all just as well without pushing you towards simpatico. They did avoid the likes of former partner Liz Hurley and other controversies, but for the most part, they did justice to the legend. It only felt lacking in that the makers could not recreate the theatre that Warne could string together. Truth is, no one can.
And that is how you leave a mark. 'Bowled, Shane!’