As I sat watching Shane Warne’s Memorial Service, I still can’t quite believe he has passed.

Many of his exploits have been shared, but I thought it timely to share a personal yarn.

I didn’t know Warne, but in November of 1999, I was playing cricket in Brisbane and was lucky enough to be asked to be a net bowler for Australia for the first test of the summer at the Gabba v Pakistan.

It also happened to be the debut test for Adam Gilchrist. Even though they had played many ODI’s with each other they decided it was pertinent to spend a bit of time bowling to Gilly as the keeper and go through the varieties he would be tossing up in the game.

Well, these two legends of the game grabbed another of the net bowlers (in hindsight, I’m glad it wasn’t me) to bat against him with a stump. This ‘other’ net bowler was a quality first grade cricketer who had arrived in Brisbane at the same time as me, but had come from the much stronger Sydney First Grade Competition and played first class cricket for NSW.

Shane asked the guy to pad up and bat against him with a stump. Gilly parked himself behind the stumps and the batsman confidently asked Shane whether he should deliberately miss them and occasionally hit a few?

Shane gave Gilly a wry smile and said to the batter, “how about you just go down there and do your best champ.”

Well, let’s say that for the next forty minutes, this guy tried his absolute best to hit every ball with his stump. He missed every one, the harder he tried the further he missed by. The longer the session went the more the rest of the team and us hangerons stopped what we were doing to mill around and watch. The boys were egging everyone on, and the batter became more and more embarrassed. He left the net session with his tail firmly between his legs.

A classic example of never pushing a genius.