Australian Cricketer Shane Warne Ready to Bowl Some Players Over

Shane Warne is one of the greatest sportsman of our generation. Unfortunately for the majority of our readers who are based in the USA, his name may not be as highly regarded as ones such as Michael Jordan or Derek Jeter because Warne plays the game of cricket. The most popular sport in the world behind only soccer.

Like Jordan, Warne is arguably one of the greatest players in his chosen sport amassing a career set of accolades that include 708 Test wickets, 293 One-Day International wickets, an unfortunate high score of 99 and the honor of bowling the Ball of the Century to Mike Gatting in his first ever delivery at Old Trafford in England.

Warne however has been a keen poker player over the past few years and amassed results in Australia and abroad while participating in both the WSOP and WSOP Europe Main Events in recent times. However this is where Warne's story gets interesting.

Just this weekend, the Lord's Cricket Ground; the Official Home of Cricket, hosted a 200th Anniversary match between the MCC and Rest of the World sides. Warne's ex-teammate Brett Lee was bowling to Warne, and struck him with a beamer in the hand. Warne continued to play on, but an x-ray later revealed that Warne had broken his right hand. Bandaged up and in a cast, Warne had to make a flight from England to Las Vegas so that he could take a seat in today's Main Event flight.

Our PokerNews blogger - who is also a fellow Australian - bumped into Warne during the hallway at the last break and said hello. Warne then detailed how his broken hand was just the start of his rocky road to get here.

Although Warne and his family - a party of eight in total - were booked on an early flight out of Heathrow airport, that flight would cancelled. With Warne needing to find another flight to get everyone her to Las Vegas, he found two options landing at Chicago or Miami and Warne quickly got his group together and headed to the airport. On the way down the A4 however, the car he was being transported in broke down and a quick-thinking Warne turned into hitchhiker mode where he happened to flag down an Indian man in a van who happily gave all eight people and their mass of luggage a ride so that Warne could make it in time.

Warne - who is located in the Black section of the Pavilion room - was hoping to register late today so that he could be extra refreshed to tackle a day of poker, but unfortunately his sponsor 888Poker registered him on time so that his stack was in play from the start.

"I have to run good today. It can only go up from here!" stated an optimistic Warne during break.