The baked beans story of Shane Warne was just a myth. The legendary spinner had once narrated the real story of how the Australian cricket team received 1,900 cans of baked beans while they were on a tour of India in 1998 but after a request from their coach Geoff Marsh. Not Warne.
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“Marsh rang Cricket Australia, Cricket Australia then rang the company and said, ‘hey look the Australian boys need some baked beans and spaghetti to put on their toast in the mornings’,” he said. “We got three tonnes each … addressed ‘Shane Warne, India’… so everyone thought I was desperate for baked beans, so it just stuck for the last 20 years.”
But the wizard of spin loved his baked beans, margherita pizza and bacon sandwiches. Even dining in some of the finest restaurants in the world, he would simply pop out and order pizza. His son Jackson reveals such an incident in a podcast. “You know [Japanese restaurant] Nobu and Rockpool at Crown?’”Jackson said on the Life of Brian Podcast.
“There have been multiple times where he would have an important meeting or catching up with people there for dinner. He would go to the restaurants – he knew he wasn’t going to eat anything – he would be looking at the menu [and saying], ‘I don’t eat steak, these fish and oysters, no thanks, not for me’. So 40 minutes later, there would be a pizza from Gradi, just around the corner. He would be eating a pizza from a different restaurant in one of the restaurants there,” he narrated.
When Tendulkar recalled Warne’s pizza love
His great competitor friend Sachin Tendulkar too had a similar incident to recollect. “I had invited Warnie over, said come to my place and we will have a nice meal. I checked if he is fine with Indian food and he said, ‘Yeah, yeah! Don’t worry’. I asked him if he is fine with spicy food and he said, avoid too much spicy stuff. I told the chef and he prepared accordingly,” said Tendulkar.
The night, though, ended up with Tendulkar ordering pizza for him. “We ended up ordering a pizza for him. He didn’t want to hurt my feelings and kind of handled that well despite the food. He was never comfortable with Indian food, which is what I discovered that evening,” he said.
Former teammate Brett Lee had also narrated a similar story of his . “I remember going to that famous Japanese restaurant Nobu, and Warnie ordered a margherita pizza,” Lee said once said on the Willow Talk Cricket Podcast. “Warnie only ever ate his baked beans, cheese on toast, he liked lasagna, spaghetti bolognese and margherita pizzas. We were going to one of the best restaurants in the world and Warnie, just being Warnie, decided to order margherita pizza. “I don’t think he ever ate one vegetable in his life.”
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Another highly circulated story was that he hosted a bunch of Cricket Australia officials and journalists at a high-end eatery. Every time the enthusiastic waiter approached him to take the order, he would wave him off. “No thanks mate,” he said. “I’m right.”
Soon a pizza delivery person soon arrived and Warnie started nibbling into the cheese-heavy slices right there at the table. The waiter apologetically told him he can’t eat them there. Warne smiled, took his pizza out of the restaurant, found a park bench and tucked into the meal and enjoyed a cigarette for dessert.
