Spin king's quest for another maiden over
22Dec06
STUDENTS, strippers and single mums -- Shane Warne, the philandering king of spin who Australians love and loathe in equal measures, bedded them all -- and more -- during his cricketing career.
Thirteen years after he surged to prominence in a tour of New Zealand, Warne has captured 699 Test wickets, but the man nicknamed 'Hollywood' is said to have made even more conquests under the covers.
At least, that's according to his unauthorised biography by Paul Barry, which quoted a friend of Warne as saying the leg spinner 'probably had 1000 women and only got caught five times'.
In fact, he was caught almost a dozen times across three continents and made just as many front-page headlines for his record with maidens of a different kind as he did with his freakish bowling.
While he lurched from one crisis to the next, most involving women but others involving drinking, smoking and allegations of drug use and match-fixing, the wickets kept piling up and Warne's popularity never spun out in a country that idolises its champions.
The 37-year-old was treated like a rock star and he had a rock star's appetite for sex and gambling, as
well as fast cars, fancy homes and sponsors who lined up to make him a millionaire many times over.
"Sometimes you just don't believe it's all happening. Everything is going full steam ahead in fast-forward," he once said of his lifestyle.
The long list of Warne's highs and woes gathered pace in 1997 when he was criticised after appearing drinking and dancing with a stump on the Australian balcony after Australia clinched the Ashes in England.
A year later, the flamboyant bowler with the blond hair and diamond stud was forced to acknowledge he and Australian teammate Mark Waugh had accepted money from an Indian bookmaker while on tour in Sri Lanka in 1994.
After being axed from the Australian Test side in 1999, he 'had a smoke one night when I was bleep ' and was soon back on the cigarettes, despite being under contract after accepting $200,000 from an anti-smoking company to kick the habit.
In 2000, cricket's bad boy overtook Dennis Lillee as Australia's leading Test wicket-taker, but it was a year Warne would rather forget.
He was involved in an altercation with a 15-year-old boy in
Wellington who photographed him smoking while touring New Zealand, then he lost the Australian vice-captaincy to Adam Gilchrist after being involved in a phone-sex text message scandal with British nurse Donna Smith.
Soon after, he was blasted by Australian coach John Buchanan for being overweight during the tour of India.
Warne found himself in the headlines in the Australian and British press again after South African woman Helen Cohen Alon, a 45-year-old divorcee, accused him of sending her vulgar text messages.
Then Warne had to weather allegations of drug use.
He said he had taken a 'fluid tablet', a diuretic he claimed his mother had given him to make him appear trimmer on TV but which experts said could also be used to mask the use of anabolic steroids.
The same year, Warne was back to his old tricks with the women as
well.
Melbourne stripper Angela Gallagher claimed in
Sydney's Daily Telegraph that Warne swamped her with raunchy texts that led to a threemonth affair after they met at a nightclub.
But the fraudsters had him in their sights as
well, with
Gold Coast businessman Christopher Kent fined $11,500 after being found guilty of trying to extort $5000 from the Australian Cricket Board.
Despite public warnings from his wife Simone that there would be no more married life if he strayed again, Warne last year was accused of stripping naked in front of 25-year-old student
Laura Sayers in a London flat before begging her for sex, in a story published in London's The Sun.
Ms Sayers was one of five women who came out of the woodwork and admitted to affairs with Warne during his eight weeks in England before the Ashes tour.
One of them was 31-year-old blonde Kerrie Collimore, a divorced mother of three, who told The Daily Mirror said she had a steamy two-month affair with Warne after they met in a nightclub.
Southampton secretary Michelle Masters said she also had an affair with Warne, exchanging up to 30 text messages a day with him.
There were also claims of another romance with a 20year-old archeology student named Rebecca Weedon.
The accusations of his sexual exploits kept stacking up and last year Simone pulled the plug on the relationship and the couple announced they would split.
It prompted Channel 9 boss Kerry Packer to terminate Warne's $300,000 a year contact with the network over his series of scandals. However, Warne was re-hired a few months later.
Simone told a women's magazine that the final straw came when Warne woke her one morning in their new home in Southampton, in southern England, and confessed to the affair with Ms Sayers.
Simone, who returned to
Melbourne at once with the couple's three children, said Warne had received an early-morning call from his manager warning him the details of his relationship with the saucy Ms Sayers had been exposed in a London newspaper.
The indiscretions kept coming this year, with the cricketer filmed wearing just Playboy jocks during a dalliance with two women while back in England playing for Hampshire.
Warne expects plenty more media attention on his personal life, even as an ex-cricketer.
"It's nice to have that attention," he said yesterday, "but, hopefully, I won't have the same scrutiny, the same intensity, the same judgmental moralistic stuff."