THE GOOGLY: SHANE'S ALIEN WARNING

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The X-Files is back, and the truth is out there, according to Shane Warne. “We started from aliens,” he told dancer Bonnie Lythgoe (who she? Ed) on the Australian version of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here. 

Fox ‘Spooky’ Mulder and Dana ‘Sceptic’ Scully are back on the trail of the Zeta Reticulans, and Shane ‘Googly’ Warne wants in, too. “If we’ve evolved from monkeys, then why haven’t those ones evolved? Because, I’m saying, aliens,” he told the former British dancer. “Look at those pyramids, Bonnie. You couldn’t do them. You couldn’t pull those ropes, huge bits of brick and make it perfectly symmetrical. Couldn’t do it. So who did it? Whatever planet they’re on out there, they decided that they were gonna start some more life here on earth and study us.”

Lythgoe was not sure, flat-batting back: “Scientifically, we have so many similarities to monkeys, so I don’t know.” But Warne unleashed a zooter: “Maybe they turned a few monkeys into humans and said, ‘Yeah, it works’.” Fascinating stuff, and it made me wonder if Warne could star in a cricket version of The X-Files. Conspiracy investigations could include, ‘Who culled Harold Larwood after Bodyline?’; ‘Who really said what in the MCC selection meeting for South Africa 1968/69’; and, ‘Just what did Warne do to his eyebrows?’

I shouldn’t mock. I love The X-Files and I am a great admirer of Warne. He is entitled to his theories. Cricketers can be an unimaginative, uncomplicated lot at times. In sharp contrast to the game they play.

A member of Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) says one way to convince advanced aliens that we are a species worth engaging with – or at least not worth destroying to make way for a hyperspace bypass – is to show them the Laws of cricket.

Seti spokesman Dr Seth Shostak said: “If they look up cricket, there are descriptions, pictures, diagrams showing a pitch, footage. They will cross-correlate all this and put it together and if they are clever at all, they will figure out something about cricket.”

But maybe, just maybe, aliens already love cricket. After the Hagley Oval hosted the fastest Test century, Dave Tickner (@tickerscricket) tweeted: “This Brendon McCullum innings was built by aliens.” So there you have it. More grist to Warne’s mill.