A tale of two anti-heroes

The unrelenting pattern of rise and fall that has marked the careers of Shane Warne and Brian Lara may look as if it was programmed by someone with a Shakespearean sense of drama, writes NIRMAL SHEKAR.

IN THE past week, two events happened in the world of cricket which, on the surface, had no connection at all. In Australia, Shane Warne was stripped of his position as deputy to Steve Waugh and the great batsman's heir apparent. In Manchester, Brian Lara hit up his 14th Test hundred to lead a West Indian fightback against England.

Even as Warne was being pilloried for conduct unbecoming of a national icon, with 70 per cent of his hometown - Melbourne - fans showing their approval of the Australian Cricket Board's decision, Lara was being celebrated as a hero for rediscovering the sort of form very becoming of a man who was, not long ago, hailed as the world's greatest batsman.

The irony is, Warne would know all about the Manchester Feeling, so to say, as much as Lara could emphathise with the Australian folk-hero in his hour of shame and distress, not quite alien to the Melbourne Melancholy.

Two remarkable cricketers with even more remarkable public and private lives - which neither the two superstars not many of us could often tell from one another - Warne and Lara are creatures of their age, imperfectly perfect products of the modern sporting culture, at once as grand and every bit as flawed as their sport.

And Warne's latest fall from glory was almost as predictable as Lara's ascent to the realms of batting brilliance. Hero to villain and back again to heroic status before plummeting to the depths all over again...this is routine business for Warne and Lara.

Both men have lived lives that would make a perfect soap opera, as Warne himself often points out. And their infuriating inconsistency, both on the field and off, should not surprise us in the least.

No two cricketers of our times have dominated the consciousness of the game's fans - for all the right and the wrong reasons - as much as Warne and Lara, flawed geniuses who have journeyed back and forth from extreme points, keeping our attention on them at all times, no matter whether they are scaling new summits or plumbing new depths.

In few other great cricket careers had agony followed ecstacy, ignominy followed glory in quite as bizarre a cycle as in the case of Lara and Warne. It is almost as if the unrelenting pattern of rise and fall was programmed by someone with a Shakespearean sense of drama.

Indeed, when it comes to Warne and Lara, nothing is a major surprise - neither the feted Himalayan highs of their careers nor the abysmal lows.

Sport has a way of reducing everything to the basics. That's part of the reason for its enduring appeal. Winners and losers. Heroes and villains. Ecstacy and agony. Rags and riches. It's all quite simple. And, for the millions of fans, simply great.

To sportslovers, these stark contrasts, the black and white divisions, are the very soul of sport.

In an otherwise complicated world where nothing is what it seems and where the lines are disconcertingly blurred, sport is an island of sanity, a world where everything fits into a neat framework. Win is a win. Loss is a loss. Joy is joy. Sorrow is sorrow. Heroes are heroes. Villains are villains. There is no confusion regarding identity. No mix up here.

This is the reason why sport is such a popular universal language. Its essential simplicity is its greatest virtue, its single biggest draw-card - something that converts to its fold large masses of human beings from all parts of the world.

But there are times when the line is blurred to the point of being almost invisible, times when your certainties are shattered, when it is not possible anymore to typecast, when something doesn't fit into the slot reserved for it.

So, what do you think Warne is when he turns a seemingly unwinnable match on its head in a single over, or perhaps two? Hero? And what do you make of him when he leaves lewd messages on the cellphone of a woman he met at a pub in England? Villain?

And what do you think Lara is when he blasts the world's best bowling attack with an inspired batting display that cannot be matched? Hero? Later, when he departs in the middle of a tour on private business and fails to turn up in time for a key match, what do you make of him? Villain?

If only Warne owned his captain Steve Waugh's lifestyle and good manners, if only Lara was as straight and polite and gracious as Courtney Walsh...

If only circles were squares! Well, forget it. If Warne was simply great like Steve Waugh and Lara was a perfect uncomplicated gentleman like Walsh, Warne wouldn't be Warne and Lara wouldn't be Lara - and I am not talking about their identities as human beings but merely as cricketing superstars.

It is their proclivity to swing from one extreme to another that turns Warne and Lara into irresistible performers. And a part of the reason why we are attracted to these anti-heroes is that many of us secretly wish that we could behave the way they do and get away with it too.

Most of us don't dare, but deep inside, the law-breaking, convention-shattering instinct lurks in many of us and we love the natural- born rebels of sport as much as we profess, in public, to hate them.

Last month, at Wimbledon, the man who once bent all sorts of rules and mocked at the time-honoured conventions of the citadel of tennis, John McEnroe, was greeted with much greater enthusiasm than Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg and even the great Rod Laver, during the Millennium Champions Parade.

The point is, with every infamous tantrum he threw, McEnroe's star-value went up, with every widely reported outburst on the court, the temperamental New Yorker's status as a draw-card was enchanced.

In the event, we must admit that Warne and Lara are two of the most fascinating characters in modern cricket. All complicated lives need not be interesting but most interesting lives often turn out to be complicated as in the case of the Australian and the West Indian.

These two are the sort of players about whom every cricket fan will have a strong opinion - one way and/or the other. You cannot say this of players such as Steve Waugh and Walsh. As great as they are, captain Waugh and Walsh are plain heroes and everybody recognises them as such.

But not Warne and Lara, two celebrities who can never be role models. For, if you are looking for role models you had better look in the direction of Steve Waugh and Walsh.

To this list, one can even add Sachin Tendulkar and be tempted to bring in Pete Sampras and Tiger Woods, both gentlemen champions. But, unfortunately, Sampras and Woods are so outrageously gifted, and quite incomparable and it would take an equally gifted and rare champion or someone with a monstrous ego to want to model himself on either of these men.

As for Warne and Lara, they are exceptional too. It's just that their superiority as cricketers is not matched away from the pitch...it does not translate into superiority as human beings.

And if you prefer your heroes intact, leave these two well alone.

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