“In 1976 I was dropped again and became very bitter,” he recalls. “Within five minutes I wasn’t even playing club cricket.”His life began to spiral downwards. And in 1988 he hit rock bottom when, after embezzling A$30,000 (£11,000) from the car dealerships he worked for, to finance his gambling habit, he was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison He served two years. “And I thought my life would disintegrate, although some good things came out of it.
Ian Chappell and a lot of the guys supported me, and my wife stood by me until I was through. Then she said ‘don’t come home,’ but while I was in prison she brought my daughter to see me every week. So I’ve got a great bond with my daughter, who’s now 14.”In 1990, the year Jenner was released, a friend got him a job in Adelaide coaching cricket to youngsters. “I didn’t enjoy it much, but then someone said, ‘there’s a kid coming next week you might like’.” He was a cocky 19-year-old called Shane, and Jenner recognised a kindred spirit, one he might help to steer away from the mistakes he had made. More significantly, the youngster was already a hell of a bowler. “He was only playing C-grade cricket, but I couldn’t believe how much he could spin the ball.”Jenner’s social rehabilitation dates more or less from the moment he met Warne.
“And I don’t ever lose sight of what he’s done for me, nor should we lose sight of what he’s done for Test cricket. Although he may be our worst enemy as much as he’s our greatest ally, because everybody expects kids to bowl like him and they can’t They can’t bowl his line, his pace, his shape. He gets it above the eyes, he gets it to curve.” And when this ability temporarily deserts him, Jenner steps in.”I’m not a genius, and I’m certainly not the only person he’s taken advice from, but if he talks to one person about his action I think it might be me. His action is not as strong as it was, and he’ll tell you himself that he gets less spin than a couple of years ago, because he’s had two finger operations and a shoulder operation. But he’s still a bloody good bowler.”And I talk it through in a manner he knows.
I was invited to the nets at Lord’s once, when his confidence had gone. The physio kept saying he had to rest, but I knew the right thing to do was to find his spin, not rest his shoulder. Suddenly he started to spin it again big-time, and Ian Healy said to me, ‘what is it, Doc? You say the same things we say to him, but with you it works.’ That’s about right I just go back to basics every time. Side on, transferral of weight, don’t get the bowling arm too high. But he knows I can bowl it, I can qualify and quantify what I’m saying.”What, though, did Jenner say when he saw Warne’s first ball in Ashes cricket, I wonder? I should think it was “strewth,” at the very least? “Actually, I’d just spoken at a dinner in Melbourne. And when I’d finished someone turned on the TV and said ‘hey, your boy’s on’. When I saw him bowl Gatting I said, ‘that’s the problem with young kids of today.
It took me two years to teach him that ball and I said whatever you do, don’t show it first up’ They realised I was joking.”Jenner chuckles. “Some things you’re delighted happen in your lifetime, and I’m glad he came along in mine.” Had he not, who knows where, or even whether, Jenner would be. “Yes, my line is that I’m not proud of what I did, but I am proud of what I’ve done.”*Cricket Live takes place at Telford International Centre on 1 and 2 May. For tickets call 01926 834 780 or contact info ExpoM.co.uk. Yellow Fever, rather than foot-and-mouth disease, has been on Mick McCarthy’s mind ahead of tonight’s European World Cup Group Two qualifying game at home to Andorra.
