Ball of the Century

After a slow run-up of just a few paces, Warne rolled his right arm over and delivered a leg break to the right-handed Gatting. In slow-motion, it can be seen that the ball initially travels straight down the pitch towards the batsman. As it travels towards the batsman, the rapidly spinning cricket ball starts to drift to the right. The ball ends up bouncing several inches outside Gatting's leg stump. Gatting responded by thrusting his left leg forward towards the pitch of the ball, and pushing his bat next to his pad. This was a standard tactic used by most experienced batsmen, with the intention that the ball hits the pad or the bat. Since the ball lands outside the leg stump, the batsman cannot be given out LBW, and if the ball spins slightly more than expected, it will hit the bat and bounce safely to the floor.

That ball

Upon bouncing, however, the ball spun far more than expected. It passed the outside edge of Gatting's bat, and clipped the top of his off-stump, dislodging the bails. As Warne and his team mates jumped up in celebration, Gatting stood casually for a few seconds, unsure what all of the fuss was about, until he finally realised that the ball had somehow hit his wicket. In a memorable image, Gatting simply stared at the pitch in unbelieving amazement for several seconds, before accepting his fate and walking off the field. Television images showed Gatting as he walked off the field, shaking his head repeatedly with an expression of sheer disbelief on his face. The dismissal was captured in a famous photograph by Steve Lindsell, in which Gatting's mouth is formed into a perfect "O" of surprise, while wicketkeeper Ian Healy raises his arms in celebration behind and Gatting's off bail spins somewhere above his head.