Former Australian Test cricketer Terry Jenner, who coached spin legend Shane Warne, has died. Jenner, who played nine Tests as a leg-spinner in the 1970s, departed for his heavenly abode in Adelaide on Wednesday aged 66 after a long illness.
Though Jenner will be remembered first as the man who mentored Warne, he was much more than that having devoted much of his life to helping young spin bowlers, and not just Australian ones. He had conducted a series of coaching clinics in England and before that been in Zimbabwe helping mould young cricketers there.
He is also the only Australian Test cricketer to be jailed, spending 18 months in prison in 1988 for stealing money from his employer. Jenner had claimed that it working with Warne that helped turn his life around.
“Working with Shane changed everything,” he said late last year. “I was out there earning the respect of people and the good news is that I felt like I’d redeemed myself for the downs I had,” ABC News had quoted him, as saying.
Jenner began advising Warne during the champion bowler’s brief stint at the Australian Cricket Academy in the early 1990s. He was regularly at hand during Warne’s record-breaking career, providing advice on his action.
His work with Warne also opened commentary doors at the ABC, where he could regularly be heard telling young spinners to “give it a rip”.
Jenner was born in Perth in 1944 took 34 wickets in nine Tests for Australia over a four-year period, including a Test-best of 5 for 90 against the West Indies in Trinidad in 1973. He also played a solitary one-day international.
Warne has said his mentor was an amazing man who was full of knowledge which he wanted to share. The spin wizard tweeted his grief on learning of Jenner's death and said he was writing a piece on "TJ" which he would post on his website on Thursday. "So much to say about the great man - we all owe TJ so much," Warne tweeted.
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