Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. May 20. Twenty20. Shane Warne tosses up a slower leg-break to Rohit Sharma. It pitches short. Sharma comes down the pitch, takes a swipe, misses and the exaggerated swing sends the bat flying out of his hands. Wicketkeeper Pinal Shah removes the bails, Sharma is stumped and Warne takes his last of 1851 wickets (first-class, one-day and twenty20) from his third-last ball in the 2011 Indian Premier League. (Video is the fifth wicket of this short highlights package.)
At 41 years and 8 months, Warnie has called it a day. Again. He has been retiring from various forms of cricket on a frequent basis ever since his planned ODI swan song at the 2003 World Cup was upstaged by a drug ban. There was his high-profile retirement from Test cricket at the end of the 2006-07 Ashes, and his retrospective retirement from first-class play to embark on a lucrative poker career.
Although between poker tournaments, Warnie still had time for the new Indian Premier League. After two years captain-coaching the Rajasthan Royals (and a title in the first of those), I eulogised his retirement again in May 2009 (with this follow-up here).
So now, at the end of IPL4, we commemorate Shane Warne's retirement again. Or do we?
Three words: Big Bash League. Would he extend his playing career yet again to give his presence to yet another plastic twenty20 comp back on his native sod?
I suspect that his commitments with Channel 9 will prove more attractive than rolling his arm over for four overs per night in two-over spells. He can be expected to spend plenty of time behind the mike during Australia's home Test series against India in December and January, against which Cricket Australia has bizarrely cross-scheduled its new T20 toy.
There's more to his Channel 9 contract, of course. "Top Gear Australia", for one. "Warnie", however, we may not see again - the talk show so bad channel 9 didn't even run the final episode (though, to be fair, it was better than the worst TV chat show ever by an all-time sports legend - CNBC's "McEnroe").
Nine is full of weird and costly program concepts that usually crash in a screaming heap after a few weeks. Shane Warne will surely star in several of them. Even if he doesn't, there's always the poker.
And, so it seems, Liz Hurley.