It was the seminal moment of the 1990s: a wide-pitching, leg-side leg-break delivered by a young bowler making his way in Test cricket for Australia and, for good measure, was his first ball in a Test in England. Facing it was one of England's bull dogs and, technically, one of England's best players of spin. We know what happened, we have seen the famous ball many, many times since and now we have a full, and very interesting book, on the subject. As I have often written before, cricket has drawn a long list of subjects on which the game has been written and this one, unsurprisingly titled Ball of the Century, has much packed into what amounts to two seconds of play from point of delivery to the dislodging of the off bail after dramatically changing course.

Brendan Cooper has compiled Ball of the Century against a backdrop of events around the same time, both politically and culturally. I have read other books written in the same way and enjoy this style. Okay, music of the late twentieth century is not my area of expertise but it may have taught me something. Brendan has quoted extensively from a wide range of newspapers and enlightens the reader on how this one moment of glory for Shane Warne made him into one of the most famous cricketers of all time whilst the effect on England was quite the opposite.

Of course, a book of this length over one ball covers very much more than the defining moment of the topic. It is biographical in many ways: not only Warne but, the tormented victim, Mike Gatting and Graham Gooch, amongst others. Leg-spin bowling and its purveyors, both in Australia and around other cricket-playing countries, are both analysed in depth. Many were decent if not good bowlers but battled not only against the accepted benchmark of Warne but also the view that the subject of leg-spin bowling was treated with suspicion and a reluctance at times to use.It is interesting to pause and consider what might have happened had Gatting played the delivery, or differently. We should be grateful to Brendan for writing this book but there would have been no book had the subject narrowly missed the off stump. We can all recount other examples of staggering Warne deliveries but the 1993 ball to Gatting was the making of a legend.

The book is also fascinating charting the mood, behaviour and change both politically and socially in England and it is not difficult to try to compare the landscape then and now. The reader will learn much besides in the cricket and wider world by the time that Warne's remarkable leg-break finally hits the off bail almost halfway through the ball.

It was a terrible shame that Shane Warne would die, on the same day as another celebrated Australian, Rod Marsh, aged just 52. Ball of the Century concentrates predominantly on the 1990s and cricket will be forever grateful to Shane for what he did for the game. We should again be grateful to Brendan Cooper too for this very interesting account of the famous cricketer and for the moment that made him and changed cricket.