While Shane Warne has been showered with accolades after taking his 700th Test wicket, the respected statistician Bill Frindall has bucked the trend and suggested that Warne is not quite there yet.
When the electronic scoreboard flashed up "Congratulations Shane Warne: 700 Wickets" yesterday, the coughing and spluttering emanating from the commentary booth were the sounds of an indignant man choking on chocolate sponge. You could strap Bill Frindall into a barber's chair and threaten him with a fate worse than death, which would be a stick of shaving foam, a razor and a bottle of aftershave.
But all you'd get out of Bearders would be his name, rank, his Association of Cricket Historians and Statisticians' serial number, and a defiant: "Even if I walk out of here with a complexion like Kylie Minogue's, you'll never get me to talk." Or even admit to Andrew Strauss becoming Warne's 700th Test victim. As far as Bill is concerned, the six wickets Warne took in the so-called Australia v World XI "Supertest" in October last year count for the same as the wickets he's taken in his back garden.
Frindall reckons – with some justification – that the six wickets in the much-derided ICC Super Test should not count … and who knows, in the coming years they might be expunged from the record books once the ICC realises that the Super Test idea is not the commercial cash cow it hoped it was.
The only hope is that Warne takes the couple of wickets needed to put the matter beyond doubt before he hands up his boots next week.
