Give me that flipper Shane

Family, however, makes an appearance again in 2003. The occasion was the injudicious taking of tablets, which pushed Warne, and Australia, into the less than flattering light of sports doping. That year, Warne was found to have taken a banned diuretic. Like many an idiot son in the lurch, he blamed his unwitting mother, who wished him to look "nice" when facing the media.

At the time, Dick Pound, former vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, found that explanation incorrigible, "laughable" and on par with the excuse, "I got it from the toilet seat". In February 2003, the Australian Cricket Board drugs panel imposed a twelve-month ban.

An unrelenting Pound would continue to find Warne's account dubious. In his 2006 book Inside Dope, the former sporting administrator is withering to the cricketer. Pointing the finger at his mother for wishing to see a more streamlined version of her son before the cameras concealed the fact that Warne was nursing a shoulder injury. "The diuretic was a masking agent that could have hidden the possible use of steroids that would help the injury cure faster. He had returned to play almost twice as quickly as the experts had predicted."

With Warne's entry into the pantheon of cricket's immortals, ethicists and philosophers will have no reason to lose sleep. Dick Pound will remain unconvinced. The most profitable exercise will be to regard the player's talent on the field with admiration, and his ability to command loyalty as remarkable. Keep him on cricket's throne. He looks best there.