Shane Warne was back on top of the cricket world Friday, breaking the all-time record for test wickets. This time he was making headlines for the right reasons.
Warne became cricket's highest wicket-taker when he dismissed Irfan Pathan for his 533rd test scalp during the second test match against India. Warne, 35, had Pathan caught by Matthew Hayden at first slip to move ahead of Muttiah Muralitharan's total of 532.
For better, or often worse, the blond Australian legspinner has been making news since he first burst onto the international cricket scene in 1992.
On a good day, big test match wicket hauls or a new delivery that bamboozles batsmen earns him a place on newspaper back pages.
On a bad day, he dominates front pages, like when he earned a yearlong suspension for using a banned diuretic just before the last World Cup, or a telephone sex case that cost him the Australian vice-captaincy.
There was also an altercation with a child who snapped a photo of Warne smoking, and a gambling scandal that linked him with an Indian bookmaker.
When Warne returned home in disgrace in February 2003 from South Africa after telling his teammates he'd taken illegal diet pills, Australian newspapers reacted nearly hysterically.
Brisbane broadsheet The Courier-Mail had Warne on the front and back pages, suggesting the drug charge could end his career. It detailed a litany of Warne's off-field indiscretions in a column headed: "Strife and Times of Shane Warne."
"The career of arguably Australia's greatest cricketer since Sir Donald Bradman could be ended by a two-year ban," wrote News Ltd. national cricket reporter Robert Craddock, who described Warne as a ``brilliant but disaster-dogged cricketer.''
The Age newspaper in Warne's hometown Melbourne carried the headline: "Life of Drama at every turn."
When Warne completed his ban and returned to the pitch in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in March he was basically unrepentant, and promised better things.
"What happened in the past, happened in the past. I've learned a lot about myself ... about a lot of different things," Warne said then. "I am ready for whatever challenge is now ahead."
Part of that challenge is an ongoing personal duel with Sri Lankan spinner Muralitharan. After Friday's heroics at Madras, India, it's advantage Warne.
Warne equaled Muralitharan in the last over of play Thursday, the opening day of the match, by dismissing opener Yuvraj Singh. Warne is playing his 114th test match, while Muralitharan amassed his wickets haul in 91 tests.
Shoulder injuries have caused lengthy spells away from the field in Warne's career, including a seven-month layoff following shoulder surgery in 1998. He returned to lead Australia to the World Cup in 1999, picking up man-of-the-match honors in both the semifinal and final.
The wicket cements his place in cricket history, his off-field antics have made him a one-man media phenomenon. Warne, who retired from one-day cricket in early 2003, admitted to leaving "dirty" messages on the telephone answering machine of a British nurse he'd met in a nightclub in June 2000 while completing a stint with Hampshire in the English county competition.
That confession saw him lose the test vice-captaincy, handed to Adam Gilchrist, who is leading Australia in India in the absence of injured captain Ricky Ponting.
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