Cricket's greatest legspinner Shane Warne has taken an unwanted hat trick in the wake of his positive drug test at the World Cup in South Africa.
The 33-year-old Australian Test great, who completed a Test hat-trick against England in the 1994-95 Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, now has annexed a trio of sporting scandals -- corruption, sex and now drugs.
Critics have cited Warne's dealings with illegal bookmakers, a sex scandal in Britain where he was accused of bombarding a young nurse with suggestive phone
messages and a general air of arrogance as evidence the bowler had "more flaws than the Empire State Building".
He was scheduled to return to Melbourne late yesterday after he tested positive for a banned diuretic after a test by the Australian Sports Drugs Agency (ADSA) before the team flew to South Africa earlier this month.
Under the Australian Cricket Board's anti-doping policy, Warne could either a three-month ban or a two-year ban when the anti-doping panel meets this week.
"Devastated" ran the page one headline on Sydney's Daily
Telegraph, with The Australian newspaper concentrating on Warne's declaration "I'm no drug cheat."
The Australian labelled Warne the "stupid spinner," after he was sent home from the tournament in South Africa on Tuesday following revelations he had tested positive for a banned diuretic drug in Sydney last month.
Prime Minister John Howard took time out from a series of
international crisis meetings on Iraq to express his sympathy for Warne and urge cricket authorities to deal with him fairly.
"He is a great Australian cricketer. My hope is he'll be back playing for Australia before long," Howard said in New York.
Warne's family in Melbourne also spoke of their distress, with a source close to the family saying the bowler had taken a pill given to him by his mother in circumstances that were "totally innocent."
But there was little sympathy for Warne among newspaper commentators and radio talkback callers following the latest in a string of scandals that have tarnished the reputation of the man hailed as the greatest spin bowler of all time.
"When he dislocated his shoulder, Shane Warne must have damaged brain cells as well.
"What else will explain the numbingly dumb decision by one of the greatest cricketers in history to pop a diuretic?" Peter Jenkins asked in the Daily Telegraph.
"[Cricket] would suffer dreadfully if [his career ended] in this hasty and unhappy way.
"But he took the diuretic and now he must take the medicine," Greg Baum wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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