The Hindu : Warne may be ready for World Cup

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 17, 2002

Sport

Sport - Cricket

Warne may be ready for World Cup

By Ted Corbett

BRISBANE Dec.16. Australia today threw every resource available into the fight to get Shane Warne fit for the World Cup, proof if any were needed that the great leg spinner is an indispensable part of its armoury; and, less than 24 hours after he was carried off Melbourne

Cricket Ground with a severely damaged shoulder, it looked as if all that effort was going to pay off. It now seems that Warne will be back in action as the World Cup begins.

An operation carried out this afternoon showed that his dislocated shoulder was not as badly damaged as first estimates showed and on Monday evening the Australian Cricket Board spokesmen were hinting that he would be fit soon after the World Cup begins.

There is still a major problem for the selectors when they meet on Tuesday. Should they chose Warne among their final 15 on New Year's Eve and take the risk that he may not be fit. The example is there for everyone to see.

England brought Darren Gough, Andrew Flintoff and Michael Vaughan to Australia and hoped they would recover in time for the Ashes. Only Vaughan made the Test line-up and the other two are now back in England, out of the Australian tour and probably out of the World Cup too.

Warne will certainly miss the rest of the home season even though keyhole surgery found there is no problem with the shoulder bone although there is ligament and cartilage damage. Doctors are forecasting recovery in four to six weeks; the World Cup starts early in February.

``We have a lot of thinking to do,'' said Trevor Hohns, chairman of the selection committee. "We need clarification of the World Cup rules before we decide if we can taken Warne. It's all too early to tell.'' Stuart MacGill, the New South Wales and Nottinghamshire leg spinner, leads the way although his 17 wickets this season have cost more than 40 runs each. He is way ahead of such spinners as Nathan Hauritz, Brad Hogg and Mark Higgs and there is a chance that the selectors will make greater use of the clever slow flight and turn from Darren Lehmann who has shown in England and Australia that he can be a match-winner. However you set up the argument we come back to the same conclusion.

There is no-one in the world, and few in the history of the game, who can give his side control when the batsmen are on top and wickets when there is turn in the wicket like Warne. He is a great Test bowler with 491 wickets at 25.71 but he also has 288 one-day victims at 25.79 and that is probably an even greater summary of his unique talent.

Warne will not, of course, take part in the last two Ashes Tests at Melbourne and Sydney during the holiday period, nor in the rest of the tri-series against England and Sri Lanka but there is another interesting character on the horizon.

Adam Gilchrist, Test keeper and one-day opening batsman who made a high-speed 124 against England before Warne was injured, will rest a groin strain for Australia's game against Sri Lanka at Perth on Sunday, which leaves space for Ryan Campbell, a bearded wicket-keeper with an unusual sideline. Campbell showed it during the Australia A victory against Sri Lanka when he played a shot that lobbed a full toss on middle stump back over his own head and over the wicket-keeper's stretching hands to the boundary. It was no fluke; he did it twice.

How Sanath Jayasuriya will set a field to this inventive batsman remains to be seen. England make yet another attempt to break its long run with a victory tomorrow night at the Gabba, Brisbane, against Sri Lanka. Both sides have been quick to realise that without Warne Australia may be vulnerable which should give this encounter between the two outsiders an extra edge. Even though they lost to Australia A, Sri Lanka had signs of its old formidable flair, Russell Arnold's carefully constructed undefeated 86, and Kumar Sangakkara's blazing 72 were both better innings than any produced by an England batsman so far in the one-day series. In any event the series that had all the hallmarks of a walk-over may now turn into a close fight.

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