Legendary Australian
leg-spinner Shane Warne died at the age of 52 on Friday.  “Shane was found unresponsive in his villa and
despite the best efforts of medical staff, he could not be revived,” Warne’s
management confirmed in a statement to Australian media outlet Fox Sports.

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Warne is arguably the
greatest leg-spinner of all time, with a tally of 708 Test match wickets. He
also took 293 One-Day International wickets and made more than 300 appearances
for Australia across all formats.     

Warne has also bagged more
Ashes wickets than any other bowler in history.

Also Read: Shane Warne dies at 52, tributes pour in

Why was he banned?

Shane Warne was banned from all kinds of
cricket for one year by Cricket Australia (CA) on February 22,
2003, after testing positive for a banned substance during the ICC World Cup in
South Africa. He had to return home from the World Cup.

The CA had imposed a 12-month ban on Warne
10 days after he failed the drugs test.

Also Read: Who was Shane Warne?

Warne, then 33, had tested positive for
taking the drugs hydrochlorothiazide and amiloride, both diuretics normally
used to aid temporary weight loss, which can also serve as masking agents for
performance-enhancing drugs.

Warne, however, had vehemently denied
suggestions of any steroid use and claimed he did not know a tablet he had
taken was a diuretic.

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“The tablet I took on January 21 was a
fluid tablet, I did not know it was a diuretic,” Warne said. “I knew it as a
fluid tablet.

“It had nothing to do with cricket or
trying to mask anything, it had to do with appearance.”

But the CA’s three-man anti-doping
committee upheld the charge that Warne was using diuretics as a masking agent.

The panel halved the recommended two-year
suspension after hearing evidence that Warne could have derived no
performance-enhancing benefit from taking the diuretic.

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Warne, who later decided not to appeal
against his ban, had already announced before the World Cup that he intended to
retire from one-day cricket after the tournament.

He returned to competitive cricket in
February 2004, and the following October broke the record for most career
wickets in Test cricket against India in Chennai.