Melbourne Cricket Club to honour Shane Warne

MELBOURNE - The Melbourne Cricket Club has announced that spin wizard Shane Warne will be the 11th Australian sporting great to be honoured with a statue outside the famous venue.

The club said it had started an Avenue of Legends project, running along the path from the members’ entrance to Wellington Parade and Warne’s statue will be the first in a new series outside the sporting venue.

“Shane’s playing record is unparalleled and he will sit comfortably alongside the 10 sporting greats already outside the MCG,” club president David Meiklejohn was quoted as saying in the media here.

Warne sported many different looks during his 145-game Test career but Melbourne-based sculptor Louis Laumen, who created the statues of Sir Donald Bradman, Keith Miller, Bill Ponsford and Dennis Lillee, said he will be studying Warne’s technique to give him a suitable look.

“Some (looks) were very temporary and I don’t think it’d be best to get a classic image of him with one of his more wild experiments. I’ll have to have a look at the Shane Warne technique and see what is the moment in the whole stride, the jump there’s going to be a key moment in the action that identifies him,” Laumen was quoted as saying in Sydney Morning Herald.

Warne’s statue should be unveiled towards the end of next year.