Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting broke down tears while giving tribute to his former teammate Shane Warne. Warne passed away on Friday. aged 52 after suffering a heart attack in Thailand. The news of his tragic demise sent shockwaves across the cricketing world.
Ponting was speaking on Warne and soon he could not keep back his tears. He took a moment to collect himself before starting to speak again. Ponting admitted that he was shocked just like other fan, “I was shocked I think like probably the rest of the world. I mean I’ve got the messages when I woke up this morning. I went to bed last night knowing that I had to take my daughters for netball and then was confronted with what didn’t seem quite real at that time and even now probably doesn’t really seem like it’s real either so I’ve had a few hours now to digest it all and think about how a part of my life he was and reflect on a lot of those memories through the years,” Ponting said.
“Halfway through my career when we turned up to do coaching clinics and whatever else, every young kid in Australia wanted to be more than one of the bold leg spinners. He is going to down down as one of the all-time greats of the game if not one the greatest. I’ve never played with a more better and competitive bowler, someone who changed and revolutionised spin bowling back into,” he added.
“Hard to put this into words. I first met him when I was 15 at the Academy. He gave me my nickname. We were teammates for more than a decade, riding all the highs and lows together. Through it all he was someone you could always count on, someone who loved his family,” Ponting had tweeted.
Warne was one of the most influential cricketers and is credited to have single-handedly revived the art of bowling leg-spin. He finished his international career with 708 Test wickets and a further 293 in One-Day Internationals, placing him second in the list of all-time international wicket-takers behind his great friend and rival Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka.