Ricky Ponting admits he has to turn the TV down when he hears Shane Warne’s voice

The void left by Shane Warne’s premature death is such that Ricky Ponting has to turn down the TV whenever he hears his late friend’s voice. 

The spin king was elevated to Legend status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame on Thursday and Ponting voiced an emotional tribute to his former teammate, who died in March at the age of 52 while on holiday in Thailand.

‘Since his passing, I don’t know if you’ve been the same at home, but if there’s been any replays of cricket games on, I’ve had to turn it down,’ Ponting said to Matthew Hayden on Channel 7.

‘You can hear his voice somewhere, and then you go and find where it is in the house and you have to turn it down.

‘We all notice the loss most when the summer starts here in Australia. 

‘When he’s not here and when you’re not hearing the bold predictions, and you’re not hearing his genius in the commentary box.’

Warne would have been a regular guest in the commentary box this summer for the T20 World Cup, the ODI series against England and the Test series against the West Indies and South Africa.

But Ponting joked the late spin great would be missed far beyond the confines of a commentary box. 

‘The fact we don’t get to see him on the golf course and get some money out of him as well through the course of the summer,’ he quipped to Hayden.

[He’s] Very sadly missed.

In the three-minute video, Ponting described Warne as ‘the greatest cricketer of the modern era’ and the man who ‘single-handedly inspired a generation of boys and girls all around the world’ to take up cricket.

He recalls the extraordinary win against England in Adelaide during the 2005-06 Ashes series as one of his fondest memories of his former teammate.

With Australia 1-0 up in the series after winning in Brisbane, England declared on 6-551 in the first innings. The Aussies replied with 513, before bundling England out for a mere 129 as Warne too 4-49 in 32 overs, setting up the platform for an improbable six-wicket win.

‘It was time to sit back and watch The King on his stage,’ Ponting said of Warne’s performance.

‘He bowled 32 of the most extraordinary overs.’

Warne and Ponting were part of the Australia squad that won the 1999 Cricket World Cup and won five of the six Ashes series they played together. 

Ponting hailed his former teammate as the ‘ultimate competitor’, who was ‘never beaten’.

He added: ‘His achievements, passion and knowledge of the game was something to behold. He was a superstar, a game-changer 

Warne and Ponting first met in 1992 at the Cricket Academy in Adelaide and ‘hit it off from our very first introduction’, becoming close friends.

‘He showed me the ropes, gave me my nickname that has stuck with me ever since,’ the former Aussie captain said in the tribute.

‘I miss those chats so much.’ 

The tribute ended with Ponting putting down the microphone, chocking back the tears.

‘I got through it pretty good, made my way through,’ Ponting told Hadyen, who played alongside him and Warne in the all-conquering Aussie side that dominated across different formats for over a decade.

‘It was all on autocue, I could see the end on the bottom of the page.

‘I was going through it and it got down to the bottom bit and that’s when I lost it a little bit there. I could go on for another 10 or 15 minutes.’

Warne’s death came just hours after Rod Marsh passed away and two months before Andrew Symonds, who also played with Warne, Ponting and Hayden, died in a car crash. 

Ponting himself suffered a health scare last week, when he had to abruptly leave Channel 7’s commentary position during the first Test between Australia and the West Indies in Perth and was rushed to hospital after complaining of chest pains. 

The emotion of losing such close friends in such a short time was ‘raw’, Hayden said, as he reflected on an incredibly said years for Australian cricket.  

‘We can rejoice in the fact that their spirit lives on in our great game,’ he said.

‘In the spirit of cricket.’