Shane Warne (via Cricket Australia YouTube)

Shane Warne’s got another book out – No Spin. In it, he’s taken the time to dig over old grievances with Steve Waugh.

The story is this. Steve Waugh wanted to drop Shane Warne once because he was coming back from major shoulder surgery and he wasn’t bowling very well. Warne agreed that he wasn’t bowling very well, but said he was about to start bowling very well any minute now, so Waugh shouldn’t drop him.

Waugh dropped him.

Let’s say that the two men got on a bit less well after that point.

A little further down the line, Waugh was advised by doctors to miss a Test after a horrific on-field collision with Jason Gillespie. Waugh didn’t want to miss the Test.

Fox Sports reports that in a tour management meeting, Warne told Waugh that he didn’t think much of his suggestion that he’d field in a helmet if he had to and said that he should sit out the Test.

Waugh refused to sit out the Test. Warne stood his ground, and…

“As the conversation went on I got more and more facetious about it. I’d even say I was being a dickhead and looking for a bit of revenge.”

So there you have it: proof, finally, that Shane Warne is self-aware.

This is actually a somewhat damning revelation when you think about some of the other stuff he’s got up to over the years. A complete lack of self-awareness seemed to explain a lot.

The frustrating thing about reality TV programmes is that when someone says something interesting, there’s no-one there to ask the obvious follow-up questions.

While appearing on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Shane Warne said that humans “couldn’t do” the pyramids. “You couldn’t pull those ropes, huge bits of brick and make it perfectly symmetrical. Couldn’t do it. So who did it?”

Aliens, according to Warne. And he doesn’t stop there. He also believes that humans “started from aliens.”

The plasticated ex-legspinner has little time for the theory of evolution – so little time, in fact, that he hasn’t even bothered finding out any of the details.

“If we’ve evolved from monkeys, then why haven’t those ones evolved?” he asked.

So rather than reading a book or googling ‘evolution’ at some point during his 46 years on this earth, Warne instead invested his time devising his own Chariots of the Gods type theory of origin.

Well here at King Cricket, we’re not Shane Warne. When we hear a theory, we want to scrutinise it. If humans were ‘started’ by aliens, Shane, then which aliens?

Was it the dude from Alien Infiltration?

Because if so, we’d question that. Alien Infiltration dude is massively homicidal. And not in a ‘righting the wrongs of my species’ kind of way. He just seems to kill on a whim.

Was it Ree Yees from Star Wars?

Again, we doubt it. Ree Yees comes across as little more than a thug; a sniggering yes-man who hangs around with Jabba the Hutt, laughing at his jokes. He just doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to create life.

Also, if Ree Yees were the creator of humanity, would he have allowed us to lose an idol in his likeness when we catapulted it using the branch of a conifer tree back when we were 10?

Probably not.

Was it Lord Buckethead?

Come on Shane, think! In Gremloids, Lord Buckethead only found his way to earth by accident. You’d think he’d have known where he was if he’d created a species here.

Was it the Engineers from Prometheus?

This is what you’re thinking of, isn’t it, Shane? You watched Prometheus and thought it was a documentary.

It’s an odd species that routinely describes Shane Warne as a genius.

We’ve written about ‘aggressive cricket’ about a billion times, but that’s largely because – like a snipped clothing label that hasn’t quite been fully removed – it continues to irritate us.

Different people mean different things by ‘aggression’ and also confuse cricketing aggression with actual aggression. The latest to say something stupid on the matter is, unsurprisingly, Shane Warne.

“All this about aggressive play – aggressive play can also be about wearing down your opposition and letting the ball go well, to keep them out in the field for long periods of time.”

No it can’t.

What’s happened is that ‘aggressive cricket’ has widely come to be seen as the best way of approaching the sport and now no-one dares say otherwise. This means that on those occasions when playing aggressively isn’t the best approach, rather than acknowledging this, people instead redefine what ‘aggressive’ means.

Sports people are really, really bad at words. It never fails to surprise us how they don’t merely misuse words, but misuse them in such a way that they warp meaning and undermine the English language for other people as well.

Here’s what Warne should have said:

“All this about aggressive play – good play can be about wearing down your opposition and letting the ball go well, to keep them out in the field for long periods of time.”

Shane Warne left an important part of his brain somewhere on a cricket field in Hampshire. It’s the part that stops you doing things that your 11-year-old self would have thought a good idea.

Here he is describing a painting he had commissioned.

Here’s the painting itself.

We’d love to know what this programme was and what else was covered. We’d particularly like to hear Warne talk us through the rest of his painting.

During the last Test, there was an unsually laboured spell of commentary in which Warne revisted his ‘Sherminator’ nickname for Ian Bell while working alongside Ian Botham. “He’s not the Sherminator any more,” said Warne. “He’s Stifler” – intending this as some form of bizarre compliment.

It’s a strange sort of 45-year-old whose favourite film is American Pie. It’s stranger still for someone that age to see Steve Stifler – a character who at one point refers to himself as ‘The Stifmeister’ – as being the hero.

Botham dealt with the situation by completely ignoring Warne, despite being asked direct questions on the matter on at least three separate occasions.

Beefy has rarely if ever before seemed so professional behind a microphone.

Thanks to Russell Jackson for pointing this video out.

We had rather foolishly assumed that the ‘Shane Warne might make a comeback’ story would be the stupidest Shane Warne story of the week.

But no.

Apparently, model and actress-who-gets-by-pretty-much-solely-on-her-looks, Liz Hurley, has been having ‘an affair’ with our favourite swollen-looking Antipodean cartoon character.

What constitutes an affair? If people of different genders both agree that the crackers they’re eating are a bit dry, that’s usually enough for the News of the World.

In other equally credible news, Brad Haddin has married one of the Chuckle Brothers in a secret ceremony while Shane Watson has devised a revolutionary technique for prenatal DNA testing.

We’ll give you a minute or two to get to grips with that. You can come back later if it’s too much to take in at once.

For those of you who are okay, we’ll continue.

So you’re Shane Warne. With your reputation, would you choose to put this image in a prominent position on your website?

You’re Shane Warne. Tell us what you’re texting and to whom.