Cricket legend Shane Warne dies of suspected heart attack

Australian cricketer Shane Warne has died at the age of 52.

Global media reports say Warne died of a suspected heart attack.

According to a report by UK publication Sports Mole, Warne was found in a villa in Koh Samui, Thailand.

Warne’s management team said: “Shane was found unresponsive in his villa and despite the best efforts of medical staff, he could not be revived. The family requests privacy at this time and will provide further details in due course.”

ESPN’s Cricinfo reports that Warne’s untimely death comes hours after the death of another Australian cricket icon, former wicketkeeper Rod Marsh, who also suffered a heart attack earlier this week at the age of 74.

Known affectionately as “Warney”, he is considered one of the true icons of world cricket, and a player who almost singlehandedly revived the art of legspin in the early 1990s.

“Although luminaries such as Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir had kept the art alive, Warne brought a new glamour and attacking intent to legspin,” reports Cricinfo.

Warne is regarded as the greatest leg spinner of all time, having taken 708 test match wickets, a figure only surpassed by Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan.

Warne made his test debut at the Sydney Cricket Grounds in 1992 and rose to become a key figure across all formats in one of the greatest sustained periods of dominance by any team in world cricket.

He also took 293 One-Day International wickets and made more than 300 appearances for Australia across all formats.

Warne was the joint-leading wicket-taker as Australia won the 1999 World Cup – and brought his illustrious 15-year international career to an end in 2007.

Since his retirement, Warne had been doing “work for the Shane Warne Foundation… [which] assists seriously ill and underprivileged children”.

Warne is survived by his three children with his former wife Simone Callahan.

• This is a developing story.