Read the second part of Shane Warne's top 100 list

Shane Warne has been mixing with the best cricketers in the world — as team-mate and opponent — since he was first selected for Australia in 1992. The great leg spin bowler may have retired from Test cricket after helping to regain the Ashes last year, but, at 39, he is still sharpening his skills. Next month he leads Rajasthan Royals, the winners of the inaugural Indian Premier League, in the Champions League. With such a wealth of experience, there is no one better qualified to run the rule over his contemporaries.

Warne has revised and extended his top 50 — which caused a sensation when it first appeared in The Times — for a new book, Shane Warne’s Century. We begin extracts with his insights into some of the players he ranked from 100 to 50.

93 Arjuna Ranatunga

Through gritted teeth, I have put Arjuna Ranatunga in my 100. When I picked my top 50 for The Times, there were a few accusations that I’d gone for my mates instead of being objective.

Well, I hope this choice ends that criticism once and for all, because everybody knows that I don’t like Ranatunga. When I went over to Sri Lanka after the tsunami to help out with Murali’s great work, I met Ranatunga again, and we got on reasonably well. We even wagged. And then he bagged me in the newspaper almost the next day. You can’t be mates with everyone, and if there was any way I could knock him down to number 101 for the purposes of this book, I’d be delighted to do so. But having taken on the task, I want to do it seriously, and the fact is that Ranatunga helped to put Sri Lanka on the cricket map. And you know what? Deep down, I’ll quietly admit that I rated him as a cricketer.

Our differences are pretty well documented. Maybe we’ve kept people entertained down the years with our comments. I don’t know about him, but personally I have meant every word that I’ve said, even the ones that landed me in trouble. The basic problem I had with Ranatunga was his attitude towards the game. He didn’t play cricket in the right spirit and tried to manipulate the laws without actually breaking them. Off the top of my head, I can remember occasions when he led his team off the field because he was unhappy with an umpiring decision, ordered an umpire where to stand behind the wicket, called for a runner by faking injury to disguise his own lack of fitness — he looked as though he’d swallowed a sheep — and told his team-mates not to shake our hands after a match. Time after time, he took the mickey out of the game and got away with it because the authorities were too frightened to stop him.

Our games against Sri Lanka were always more fractious than they needed to be with Ranatunga in charge. There is a difference between playing competitively and taking liberties. The trouble was that tension rubbed off on decent people who became embroiled in situations that they would normally cross the road to avoid. There was just no need for it. There must be something in Ranatunga’s make-up that means he needs confrontation to thrive.

He was described as a little Napoleon early in his captaincy career, and I think he took it as praise. We found out that he loved it in the middle when we sledged him, so we tried to keep quiet – but he was so irritating it was hard to keep our mouths shut. He had the ability to get under everybody’s skin, and from talking to players from other countries, I know it wasn’t just Australia who disliked his approach. I have not heard a good word for him from a single international player outside Sri Lanka. Alec Stewart, for example, noted that Ranatunga was masterful at getting in the way of fielders or the wicketkeeper when a throw was coming in. But the bloke always had a way of making sure that the opposition were painted as the villains.

The other way of interpreting opponents’ dislike of Ranatunga was that he did his job. He wasn’t out there to win a popularity contest or give out prizes. He saw his role purely and simply as to help Sri Lanka win games of cricket, and he wanted to make himself into the hardest opponent he possibly could. A lot of the Sri Lanka players did not like him personally, and I know they had reservations about some of his antics, but they respected him as their leader, because he always stuck by them. He was always a tremendous supporter of Murali when accusations were flying about his action, and he strengthened his side as a cricketing unit. A few things went their way in [winning the World Cup] in 1996, but it was still a great achievement to lead them to that win, and it had an amazing impact in generating interest in the game in Sri Lanka.

Statistically, his record is not especially impressive, but he had a long Test career, and his record against Australia was good. He was no coward. He didn’t like to back down with the bat any more than he did with his leadership. There is no doubt that his fitness counted against him, because he couldn’t take quick singles, and there was always an easy one to him in the field. It was funny to see him puffing after a chase. He once said that he based his game and attitude on Allan Border. Border would be horrified to know that.

88 Mushtaq Ahmed

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