Shane Warne picks Sachin Tendulkar to bat for his life

New Delhi :Spin wizard Shane Warne is known to speak his mind and he has opened up in his new book No Spin about both on-field and off-field facets of his life. Not only has he spoken about the allegations of bookies approaching him, but the leg-spinner has also spoken about his children and relationships. Interestingly, while Warne refused to get into a debate on who between Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara was the best batsman of his generation, he did say that he would want Tendulkar to bat for his life.
“Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, easily, were the best batsmen of our generation, my time. If I want someone to score a hundred on the final day of the Test series, I would send Lara. But if I want someone to bat for my life day in, day out, I would send Tendulkar, he was a class act,” Warne told NDTV.
Commenting on the book, Warne said: “The book is an intense, personal account of my life. I’ve been brutally honest in the book. About my personal life, my relationship with my children, cricket family. I’ve gone in-depth about everything, especially the IPL 2008. Saleem Malik offered me 200,000 US dollars, he said it will be in my room in half-an-hour if I bowl wide of the off-stump and the match was a draw. That’s the bottom line of what he asked.”
The former Australia leg-spinner also recalled the time when he was offered money in Sri Lanka. “I lost 5000 thousand dollars in a casino and a friend of Mark Waugh said, ‘look, here is the 5000’ and I said ‘no, I’m okay’. But he said, ‘no strings attached and no nothing’ and that was that,” Warne said.
While many have questioned Warne’s behaviour off the field, he has revealed that he only had two relationships — one with wife Simone Callahan and then with Elizabeth Hurley.
“It’s never easy for the children when their parents break up. But they have been fantastic to both their mother and me. Now, we have got a fantastic relationship and at the end of the day, the ups and downs in our life, make us who we are. I’m very lucky to have a terrific relationship with my children,” Warne said.
“I’ve had only two proper relationships in my life. Married for 10 years to Simone and I was engaged with Elizabeth but unfortunately, the relationship just fizzled out in the end. But we are still great friends now. It was nothing that she did wrong or I did wrong. It was one of those things that didn’t work out. Her son Damien and my children, all get along and I still keep in touch which is really nice,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)