I wrote a piece profiling Shane Warne after he was voted number two on a poll of Australia’s living Test cricketers, to find our greatest ever cricketer. The top five were (in reverse order) Keith Miller, Adam Gilcrhist, Dennis Lillee, Warne, and Don Bradman. The book is a lovely coffee table number, Australia: Story of a Cricket Country’, edited by Chris Ryan, who wrote ‘Golden Boy’, in my opinion the best cricket book of recent times.

This is the 2000 word excerpt that appeared in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. The extended version of 4500 words is in the book, and I will also post it here at a later date.

He was in a trough at the time. Fresh off the back of the famous ‘Final Frontier’ series defeat in India, during which he’d taken a disappointing 10 wickets at an average of 50, Shane Warne was fielding at third man, only thirty or so metres from where I was sitting. It was the first one-dayer, late in India’s innings, and Warne had been pasted for 58 runs in his 10 overs. The M Chinnaswami Stadium was alive in a way that no cricket stadium in Australia is ever alive. The crowd pulsed with every nudged single, screamed home every boundary.

In my part of the stadium, the noise was particularly high pitched because I’d talked my way into Bangalore’s ‘ladies stand’. The idea behind gender segregation was to free Indian women from male expectations, to encourage them to express themselves without sitting beside husbands, fathers or brothers. Women had flocked in their thousands – singing and chanting, egging each other on to flirt ever more outrageously with the innocent Australian reporter trying to tell the story of their stand. The only other man within earshot was the greatest leg spinner in cricket history.

"Come on ladies, all together! Shane Warne, Shane Warne, you are a big flirt."

The Chinnaswamy's noise levels dropped, as if even the men in the stadium were temporarily drawn to what was happening behind third man. Warne adjusted his hat and walked in with the bowler.

"Shane Warne, Shane Warne, you are a BIG FLIRT."

These women were persistent. At the instigation of a policeman's wife named Larshmi, they broke into a Hindi love song, The Heart is Very Indian.

They'd done enough. Warne turned around, flashed a smile that one day would be so much whiter and blew the women of Bangalore three flamboyant air kisses. The entire stand bounced to its feet, cheering. "Shane Warne has blown us flying kisses!" beamed a girl, Prathiba. "Here in India we like him very much. He is so lovely, your Shane Warne."

He is our Warnie. His presence at the top of his mark, spinning a ball from hand to hand, zinc cream across his nose and blond hair blowing in the wind, was as reassuring to Australian fans as it must have been demoralising to batsmen. If the pitch wasn't turning, survival was difficult; on a turner, it was near impossible. The combination of spin, flight, control, endurance, disguise and physical intimidation was like nothing ever seen. Even after his non-wicket-taking balls, Warne would make an "O" shape with his mouth, as if in total disbelief that the batsman had kept it out.

"Bowling, Shaaane." Back to his mark. Do it again.

A brisk, straight approach; the economical stride and pivot, the rip and grunt; a ball fizzing in its circumvolutions at a volume almost audible to the public watching at home. "Bowling, Shane." Again, and again, and again. Drip, drip, drip. Forty thousand, seven hundred and five times in Test cricket – and surely a lower percentage of bad balls than any leg-spinner to have played the game.

Warne also knew a thing or two about timing. As surely as Don Bradman's climb to superstardom in 1930 was a panacea to a country in the grip of the Depression, the coming of Warne threw open the shutters on a game grown musty with sameness. The cricket-as-bloodsport heights of West Indies' domination were not obtainable by rank-and-file four-pronged seam attacks. Samey bowling line-ups dawdled through samey days. Cricket needed something. Almost nobody predicted the something would be a chain-smoking, canned-spaghetti-eating, blond-tipped leg-spinner from Black Rock. Warne meandered his way to the cricket academy in Adelaide via a failed footballing stint at St Kilda, a season of club cricket in England, and a mother lode of cheese sandwiches and beer. Coach Jack Potter was struck instantly by Warne's self-assurance and sense of mischief. "He walked into my office as if it was his office – walked in, big smile, sat down. He gave the impression that the world revolved around him a bit. Then again, he was such a nice, friendly sort of kid that you couldn't growl at him."

Even so, Potter did occasionally have to turn disciplinarian. "Early on," says Potter, "I caught Shane smoking, and I said, 'Shane, this is a publicly funded elite sports institution. If I catch you smoking again, you're out.' Warne's response was to offer a cheeky smile and say, 'Then you won't catch me.' And I never did.

"He had a warmth, this sense of humour . . . He was liked by the other academy kids, too. Maybe a couple were a bit jealous because he'd arrived late and because of the attention he attracted, but he was generally a popular kid." It is possible to get lost in the hype around the Gatting Ball. As I searched YouTube for a refresher, I wondered whether it had pitched on or about the popping crease, breaking nearly square behind Mike Gatting's legs. Then I found it – and it is actually more beautiful for the fact that it didn't do any of that. It's a conventional leg-spinner, drifting away and then tearing back across the batsman to clip the top of off stump, Warne's stock-in-trade for 14 seasons, although delivered with the effortless pivot and snap that typified the years before his shoulder started to degrade.

What stamped it as perfect theatre was Gatting's reaction – "It was as though someone had just nicked his lunch," joked Graham Gooch of his rotund batting partner.

Gatting was entitled to feel cheated. The ball started wide of leg and wobbled further away: what physicists term the Magnus effect, and what cricketers call "giving it a rip". To a delivery pitched that wide, any decent player of spin, which Gatting was, would be looking to tuck bat behind pad and kick the ball away. But the turn was too severe, too fast. The forgotten aspect of the Ball of the Century, and the true augury of the champion career to come, is that Warne bowled a carbon copy in his second over. This time Robin Smith did well to get an edge. Two wickets in eight turbo-charged balls.

"He came off those Ashes," former teammate Damien Fleming remembers, "and it was fair dinkum like Merv Hughes or Dennis Lillee bowling leg-spin. It was as if he'd always wanted this attention; and now, with the spotlight on him, he thrived." Collaring Warne – a feat Indian batsmen managed, on occasion – was easier said than done. Towards the end, when a shoulder injury didn't leave him with much of a flipper, he had four differently shaped leg-breaks. And in a Channel Nine masterclass with Mark Nicholas in 2006 he explained his famous control. After offering some fascinating technical insights (relax your grip, "think high", "spin up", follow through), Warne said he didn't aim for a particular spot on the pitch; rather, he thought about the shapes he wanted to induce in the batsman. "I think about what shot I want the batsman to play . . . Do I want him to go back and defend? Do I want him to come forward and drive? Do I want him to sweep? . . . That allows me to bowl exactly where I want, rather than focusing in on a spot. I've got my plan, and then I just have to execute it to get the batsman out."

Australia's 10 (at the time of writing) post-Warne spinners must laugh at the casual way he throws out those five little words: "Just have to execute it." To quote Gideon Haigh (paraphrasing Norma Desmond): "Warnie is still big; it's the cricket that got small."

A musical (long-running), a TV tonight show (short-lived), commentary spots, promotional burgers, talking figurines, poker tournaments, hair-growth miracles, the Rajasthan Royals, Simone, Liz, not Simone, not Liz . . . It's 2011, nearly five years since he last played a Test match, and Warnie is bigger than ever. Given the off-field soap opera of his life, yielding scandals in such diverse fields as cavorting with bookmakers, masking drugs, cheating on endorsement contracts, cheating on a spouse – as well as his pioneering, genre-defining work in what is nowadays known as "sexting" – you might be forgiven for thinking Australia might not have forgiven.

But there is something about Warne that draws him back to us.

There is an openness about Warne, a desire to be liked, a warmth, a willingness to give of himself, that means he genuinely is liked. Loved even.

On Twitter, @warne888 gives more of himself than the average celebrity, offering up tweets such as: "Never give up on anything or anyone! Forgive someone that has upset you and you can get what you want – if you really want it – sorry Mick." He has, as I write, 466,007 followers. Of resident Australians, only former prime minister @KevinRuddPM has more.

What attracts me is his zest for detail. He tells us how much he hates unstacking the dishwasher. He posts pictures of Nayan Doshi, a Rajasthan Royals teammate, with 31 pieces of chewing gum stuffed in his mouth on the team bus. My favourite series of Warne tweets occurred on a Saturday, March 5 this year:

"Slept good & looking forward to making pancakes for the kids breakfast. Then swimming and making jelly with them later – a good day ahead."

"Thanks for suggestions, winner looks like butter/honey and sugar. Made medium-size thick ones - is it showing off flipping them in pan?"

"Just tried to flip a pancake - oops... Let's try that again. Kids saying dad stop trying to flip. More determined now. Flipper time!!!!!"

"Last attempt at flipping one - going for a lot more wrist action - behave!!!! Keep you posted..."

"Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!"

"One small step for pancake in fry pan - one giant leap for SW... Yes yes yes!!! Never give up - keep trying is my lesson of the day. Content."

I was also making pancakes for my kids' breakfast that Melbourne morning. Warne's crosstown heroics even encouraged me to attempt a flipper or two – the penalty being a splash of scalding butter on my right wrist; the reward being awestruck admiration from my two pre-schoolers and a feeling of kinship with Australia's greatest leg-spinner. He has that knack, does our Warnie.