IND vs SL: Team India players observe minute’s silence in tribute for Shane Warne, Rod Marsh; wear black armbands

Team India players on Saturday paid tribute to Shane Warne and Rod Marsh after the Aussie greats passed away on Friday. Warne, widely regarded as one of the greatest spinners to have played the game, died from a suspected heart attack while on a holiday in Thailand. The cricket fraternity expressed its shock and grief following the passing away of the Aussie giant and paid its rich tribute to ‘Warnie’.

Ahead of the scheduled start of Day 2 in the first Test in Mohali, the players from India and Sri Lanka observed a minute’s silence in memory of Warne and Marsh.

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“A minute’s silence was observed before the start of play on Day 2 of the first Test for Rodney Marsh and Shane Warne who passed away yesterday. The Indian Cricket Team will also be wearing black armbands today,” the BCCI wrote.

Warne is widely known as was one of the most influential cricketers in history, having reinvented the art of leg-spin almost single-handedly when he burst onto the international scene in the early 1990s. By the time he retired from international cricket in 2007, he had become the first bowler to reach 700 Test wickets.

A central figure in Australia’s ICC Cricket World Cup triumph in 1999 when he was player of the match in both the semi-final and the final, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack recognised Warne’s achievements by naming him as one of its Five Cricketers of the Twentieth Century.

Warne finished his international career with 708 Test wickets and a further 293 in One-Day Internationals, placing him second in the list of all-time international wicket-takers behind his great friend and rival Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka (1,347). He also captained Australia in 11 One-Day Internationals, winning 10 and losing just once.