Shane Warne AO (1969–2022) is the most successful wicket taker in Australia's Test history. When he retired from Test cricket in 2007, he'd taken 708 wickets since playing his first match for Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1992. A specialist leg-spin bowler, he also made remarkable contributions as a slips fielder, lower order batsman and leader, securing him as one of the nation’s sporting greats. After some inauspicious early Test performances, he took seven for 52 in the second innings of the Boxing Day Test in 1992; he was the leading wicket taker for the 1993 Ashes series, during which he bowled out English batsman Mike Gatting with what was dubbed the 'ball of the century'. In 2000 he surpassed Dennis Lillee to become Australia's leading wicket taker, and during the 2005 Ashes series he became the first player ever to take 600 Test wickets. Warne weathered the fallout from various off-field transgressions to be honoured with a portrait in the Long Room at Lord's Cricket Ground, the only cricketer to have been recognised in this way while still playing. An inductee to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and the International Cricket Council Hall of Fame, he was Wisden's Leading Cricketer in the World for 1993, 1997 and 2004. Outside of cricket, Warne was a significant contributor to causes including Christchurch Earthquake Relief and fundraising for communities impacted by the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. He was named an Officer of the Order of Australia three months after his sudden death at the age of 52.
Robin Sellick (b. 1967) photographed Warne against the backdrop of the greenery surrounding the tennis court at the cricketer's Melbourne home. The portrait was one of five photographs by Sellick featured in the 2006 National Portrait Gallery exhibition Flash: Australian athletes in focus. Sellick grew up in Broken Hill, New South Wales, and began contributing to leading magazines from the mid-1990s, following a period of time working in New York. Retaining the influence of his early years, during which he was surrounded by bush characters with large personalities, Sellick's portraits are often characterised by a sense of theatricality and the use of brash, saturated colour. In photographing Warne and other Australian sporting heroes, Sellick examined their iconography, idolatry and celebrity, while also seeking to show them as ordinary people in their everyday surroundings.
Purchased 2006
© Robin Sellick
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