A final farewell innings: Shane Warne memorial sends off our beloved drongo touched by genius

In the riverfront bar, an hour or two before show time, I’m looking around trying to pick them. Obviously the woman smoking in a 2015 Australia one-day shirt; but also the young, athletic-looking family; the multicultural group of middle-aged men; the weathered-looking man in a beanie — all could plausibly be going to Shane Warne’s state funeral, about 15 minutes’ away at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. I can’t think of another event I’ve gone where that’s been true.

Warne was a specific figure who only ever appears in sport, and not even there much any more: a total drongo who was touched by genius. He had a level of physical control no normal person can approach — leg spin is probably the most arcane and unintuitive skill in the most arcane and unintuitive mass sport in the world. He was able to make keen, strategic and psychological insights in a matter of moments. And he is more famous and beloved, more overrated and underrated, than any of his illustrious teammates because of his love of the spotlight and his keen sense of drama.

He was also profoundly basic, tweeting how Stifler from American Pie was the funniest shit imaginable and proudly showing a camera crew a painting he commissioned that featured him enjoying a cig in the company of Bruce Springsteen, Jack Nicholson hefting a slab of VB towards Marilyn Monroe and JFK, Sean Connery and other celebs playing cards — the kind of loving, unironic kitsch you’d see on the wall of a ’50s-themed Hungry Jacks.

Surrounded by 55,000 fans, the attendees sit in the centre of the grounds, around the exposed pitch, facing a stage set up in front of the Great Southern Stand, now named for Warne.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is here, and in a toe-curling moment gets booed. Booed at a funeral, it’s almost impressive. Tim Wilson, whose work on franking credits I’m sure meant the world to Warne, is also here. There is an array of cricketing legends: Glenn McGrath, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor, Michael Clarke, Allan Border, Brian Lara, Curtly Ambrose and more.

There are a couple of panels — one a charming set of reminiscences from former teammates and opponents, and another featuring Warnie’s mates. Sam Newman is on the latter, his face thin and drawn tight like mulberry paper in a Shoji screen. He gets big laughs early on (“I added a wing to his beach house” he says of his years losing money to Warne at golf), until inevitably he starts a rambling story about a dispute over one particular stroke on a course in New Zealand, the wind rumbling a storm through his mic. People snap back to attention when he starts talking about Warne’s phone (“I hope it’s been impounded, oh the things he showed you…”), and panel host Andy Lee laughs a little too loud and too early to drown him out.

Warne’s family, father Keith, brother Jason and especially his kids, Summer, Brooke and Jackson, give the night’s most moving speeches. Unlike the polish of MC Eddie McGuire and others, the Warnes all strike you with that same human clarity of the speeches at the funerals or weddings in your own life — people who aren’t writers or regular public speakers, getting up in front of a crowd and trying to articulate the biggest moments in their lives. The pure emotion, the faltering sincerity, the clichés as articulate as anything could be — it’s unbearably touching.

There is an array of superstars (and Dannii Minogue) who send in video messages. Low, saturnine clouds trudge past the lit-up scoreboard as Elton John, his voice like the original recording playing next door, sings “Don’t let the sun go on me”. The woman in front of me, greying hair, a puffer jacket, nods her head along and shakes her head in emotion. The slightly callow young Indian men next to her stop bickering and hold up their phones.

Apart from John, we get a genuinely stirring version of “Angels” from Robbie Williams, Chris Martin doing a lower-register, acoustic version of “Yellow”, Ed Sheeran doing “Thinking Out Loud” (all via video) and Jon Stevens in person belting out “Never Tear Us Apart” — because of course Warne’s favourite songs are just the first you’d think of if you had three seconds to name one by that artist, the ones that played in every supermarket you’ve been to since they came out.

As the kids take to the stage, “Summer of ’69” rings out: its lyric sheet was the only thing anyone quoted all night. Anthony Callea does an operatic rendition of “The Prayer”. Last of all, as the spotlight hits the new sign on the Shane Warne stand, we get “My Way” — of course, “My Way”. The couple in front of me are openly in tears and as I look around I see they aren’t alone.

When we say there’ll never be another like him, we don’t just mean we’ll never get another sporting hero who pretty openly smoked heavily and was able to send mucky texts to nurses without really falling in the public’s estimation for long. As culture continues to split and atomise, sport is pretty much the only truly mass culture we have left — a friend of mine, watching in Perth, texted that he couldn’t imagine a single other Australian who would get this kind of treatment, and he’s almost certainly right.

And so I was moved by all of it, because that’s what happens when anyone who formed part of the material of your life dies, and you realise you share that with countless strangers.

For a very big segment of Australia, no figure like Warne — ever present for decades, wrapped up in your memories and those of most people you know, as much as a song that was constantly on the radio when you were young, someone you agreed with people about, even if all you agreed on was that he was worth having an opinion on — will ever come around again.

Reputedly up to a billion people were to tune in worldwide, and if Warne’s death meant anything at all to you, it’s the last time you’ll agree with that many people about anything.