Cricket/Tsunami Appeal match: Shane Warne has lost neither his turn nor his theatricality. Both qualities were in evidence on the second ball of his one-day comeback match after a two-year, self-imposed exile, a leg-break which drifted away, spun back and provoked an outlandish leg-side heave into the hands of the deep midwicket fieldsman.
The wicket was a crucial one - that of Virender Sehwag - whose belligerent opening had given Sourav Ganguly's Asian XI hope of running down the 344 put up by Ricky Ponting's World XI.
Equally predictably, the World XI's 112-run victory margin was overshadowed by a vaster number: the Aus$14.6 million (€8.5 million) raised for World Vision's Asian tsunami appeal, well beyond the loftiest ambitions of the game's organisers. The players, who were paid nothing, joined hands for a lap of honour and were rewarded with three cheers from a sell-out crowd of 70,000.
"None of the cricketers had to do this," noted World Vision's Australian chief executive Tim Costello. "Why did they do it? Because they are part of this wave of compassion that has said this wave of death will not beat us."
Also offering their services free of charge were airlines, groundstaff, beer companies, pie manufacturers and Channel Nine, whose telecast to a billion people in 122 countries was regularly interrupted by a procession of businessmen brandishing fat cheques.
This most remarkable of matches began unremarkably enough, with the pitch flat, the field far-flung and A$1,000 being coughed up by a mobile phone company for every single - plus A$50,000 for every six.
Ponting racked up A$265,000 alone, with eight fours and three sixes in his 115. Fierce off his legs and employing a compact backlift, he was a portrait of efficiency, gliding to his first 50 in 51 balls and his second in 47.
Then he really let loose. He on-drove Anil Kumble for six, pulled him for another and was finally stumped off the last ball of Kumble's 21-run over.
Brian Lara, tentative early, found his fluency and the boundary - a feathery late-cut, then a thunderous sweep - when he wobbled a mis-hit to deep mid-on at 52.
As breezily efficient as Ponting and Lara were during their 122-run union, the middle overs consisted of much poking into gaps, providing a persuasive ad for Twenty20 cricket - which makes its debut tomorrow when Pakistan play Australia A in Adelaide.
Asia responded gamely with a 59-run flurry between Sehwag and Sanath Jayasuriya, but once they departed only Rahul Dravid, last man standing on 75, looked entirely composed against the unfamiliar spin combination of Warne and Daniel Vettori, looping it tantalisingly.
Nobody could quibble with the skill level or competitiveness on show in this, the first non-country ODI to be officially acknowledged in the record books. What was missing was intensity, though only the most bitter spoilsports cared.
