Shane Warne’s death is like that of a friend and gets worse with each hour | Barney Ronay

Shane Warne was a great Australian as much as a great Australian cricketer, and a startlingly vivid entity

Oh, Warnie. What have you got up to now? Death is always shocking; the most shocking of all the everyday things. A day on from the death of Shane Warne, aged 52, there is still a sense of genuine disbelief, a shared bruising that seems to transcend the usual response to the loss of a much-loved sports star.

This is still hard to grasp. It feels like an escapade, a twist, another moment in the fond, picaresque story that is the life of Shane. Mainly, though, it just feels a little worse with every passing hour, a death that makes less sense, and seems more startling as it begins to sink in.