The photograph is haunting. Taken on a mournful dawn by Wayne Ludbey, it is of the statue of Shane Warne outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The cricketer's death had left Ludbey in disbelief and so, as he told me, he wandered down to pay tribute. At 5.10am, as he took the photo, the rain pelted down. Cricket still hasn't stopped weeping.

Impossibly and unfairly that fellow, 52, is gone, the baked bean-eating genius who dwelt on front pages and sports pages and tabloid pages and history's pages. The fellow who was forgiven everything because maybe we measured his sins against all that he gave us.