The difficult love life of late cricket legend Shane Warne

Cricket legend Shane Warne had a glorious professional life but his love life was a difficult one. Full of cheating scandals, a failed marriage to his childhood sweetheart Simone Callahan and a failed engagement to actress Elizabeth Hurley, his love life was the opposite of his time as a cricketer.

Shane and Simone had three kids and were married for 10 long years but what rocked the boat was his constant cheating episodes that were caught by his wife. In a documentary, Shane had shared that he had been caught cheating by Simone a number of times, which led to their divorce in 2005. In an Amazon Prime show, the late sportsman admitted to drinking away his sorrows. He would even cry on the floor after his family left England in the wake of the scandals.

His wife had even spoken about how traumatising it was when his affairs were “splashed across front pages of newspapers”. She told the show that she and the kids had uprooted their lives from England to Australia to start afresh.

“My life was pretty much turned on its head. It wasn't even a two-week turnaround before I came back to Australia,” said Simone, the former model-turned-yoga instructor.

The spin bowler eventually owned up to his mistakes on the show and confessed in an interview at the time: 'I gave into temptation, gave into opportunity.'

Shane and Elizabeth first met in 2010 and then were even engaged in September 2011; they broke up in 2013. The catch was that Elizabeth, who was in a relationship with Hugh Grant for 8 years before, had maintained a good friendship with the star which bothered Shane a lot. At the time when they were together, Shane had said that it was the “happiest time” of his life. In an interview to Mirror UK, the cricket legend had said that “I was more in love with Elizabeth than I'd realised I could be. I miss the love we had. My years with Elizabeth were the happiest of my life.”

Reflecting back to his relationship with her, he shared that “It wasn't something that she or I did wrong, it just fizzled out. We're still great friends, we still stay in touch, we're good for each other and our kids get along great.”

However, it was not just the fizzling out, but also the constant media attention that made their relationship “scary”. He said in a 2020 Foxtel docu-series A Week With Warnie, that when Elizabeth visited him in Melbourne in 2011, after 6 months of dating each other, “Some of these rogue photographers trying to get exclusives - I remember my youngest daughter Summer screaming in the back seat, "Dad, dad slow down". Cars jumping in front of us, running red lights.”

Even while enjoying a quiet meal with her at Capitol Golf Club in Melbourne, Shane had shared that they were followed by 7 cars and a helicopter.

“We couldn't go anywhere else because we'd just get 30-40 people, photographers, news crews, everywhere we went. We had seven cars following us and a helicopter over our head just following us, running red lights, cutting off in front of us,' he said.

His last relationship was with model and DJ Emily Scott, which ended in September 2014, as per reports. However, the late cricket legend cleared the rumours on Twitter/ He wrote: “I've been single for 3 years & not dated anyone or been on 1 date in that time. I'm lucky to have 3 awesome children who look after me + great family & friends too. I'm also very grateful to Sky, Star & Ch 9 for the opportunity to work on something I love - Cricket ! Thankyou.... [sic]”

As per reports, in 2019, Shane had a four way sex party with two escorts and his lover at his Maida Vale home in London. He had thrown the windows open, so much so that his neighbours could hear it all.

In 2000, he had sent erotic text messages to a British nurse while he was married to Simone and that cost him the Australia vice-captaincy.

In 2006, when the cricketer was playing a county cricket game, Shane was invited by two 25-year-olds and the pictures from that tryst were spread across media with Shane wearing only his underwear.

The same year he was caught flirting with 21-year-old Love Island contestant Lucie Donlan on Instagram, a girl younger than his eldest daughter.