A AT LEAST for the foreseeable future, South African batsman Daryll Cullinan has lost his personal feud with Shane Warne. The two have been public enemies since their first meeting at Melbourne in December 1993, and have carried on a high-profile vendetta spiced with sledging and counter-sledging. And amid all this public flexing of muscles and vocal cords is a cricket story: of one highly rated batsman's destruction at the hands of a master bowler.

Back in Melbourne a few weeks ago, Cullinan was clean-bowled by Warne on the tense final day of the First Test. It was the fourth time Warne had dismissed Cullinan in seven Tests and the tenth time in international cricket. Cullinan was left out for the second and third Tests. His international career was in jeopardy because of persistent failures against Australia, in particular a humiliating weakness against Warne.

The antipathy between Cullinan and Warne began in the first overs of the First Test between the two countries following South Africa's long years of isolation.

Play in that First Test at Melbourne on Boxing Day 1993 did not start until 5pm because of rain, but as soon as it did Cullinan made his presence felt. Standing at first slip, he set to sledging the Australian batsmen. The Australians have never denied that they regularly sledge the opposition, so they had no complaints about copping some of their own. Except that they thought Cullinan seemed to have rather a lot to say for someone in only his fifth Test.

 Cullinan had arrived in Australia with quite a reputation. Just before the tour to Australia he had made 337 not out for Transvaal against Northern Transvaal, a record for-South African domestic cricket. Soon after, he made his First Test century, in Colombo.

Yet years before that Cullinan had attracted notice. He made his first-class debut and his first hundred at 16, replacing the legendary Graeme Pollock as the youngest South African to make a first-class century.

Soon, that reputation seemed to become a burden. It is noteworthy that Cullinan has been unpopular with the Australians while the rest of the South Africans are quite friendly with Warne and company.

On that first Boxing Day, as well as sledging like a grizzled veteran, Cullinan started dropping catches in the slips. When his turn came to bat, he was out first ball, caught Border bowled McDermott. The Australians' first impressions of Daryll Cullinan were of someone who had too much to say and too little to back it.

A few days later, the Second Test began in Sydney and Cullinan faced Shane Warne for the first time in a Test. Cullinan had faced Warne in the one-day series and been bowled for a duck in a game at Melbourne. In the Sydney test, he pulled a short ball from Warne for four and smiled in satisfaction at the bowler. He might not have smiled had he known that Warne often sets up a batsman for the flipper by deliberately giving him a short one.

The ball after the boundary, Warne duly sent down a flipper and clean-bowled Cullinan. Warne then gave him a send-off in return for that smile, a gesture which drew criticism of Warne and attention to the developing duel. Warne then took Cullinan's wicket in the second innings of the same Test, caught by Steve Waugh for 3.

 Warne, like many great bowlers before him, has a keen sense of the dramas of cricket and did not miss a chance to promote the idea of a personal duel between him and Cullinan. He let it be widely known that he would not mind bowling to Cullinan for a living. The momentum was building and it was all behind Warne. Cullinan failed twice in the Third Test at Adelaide, for series scores of 0, 9, 2, 10 and 5. He was dropped for he return series in South Africa which followed soon after. Round one to Warne.

Precocious: Daryll Cullinan was the youngest South African to score a first-class century

The Australians' first impression of Cullinan were of a man with too much to say and too little to back it up

 BEFORE THIS season's Sydney Test South African coach Bob Woolmer said that the alleged duel between Cullinan and Warne was a media invention. Yet between the 1994 series and the return bout in South Africa early last year, Cullinan spoke on occasions about his battle with the great spinner. In October 1996, he gave an interview to a Johannesburg paper and said: `After this season I think I'll know within myself, can I or can't I handle him… All I can say is, Yes, I do believe, and I am confident I can come up against Warne and acquit myself better. It's pointless my saying I have no worries. I can only be confident in myself and the result will be there to see. I'm determined to settle the score with him.'

 Cullinan was not talking about Glenn McGrath or Craig McDermott. Even then, he knew a personal duel was developing. In that interview he went on to express his ambition to be his country's top batsman and `one of the best in the world'.

`I welcome that pressure, ` he said. `I want that pressure' just as well, as there was never any doubt the Australians would apply it.

 Cullinan's preoccupation with one bowler is typical of a player under intense pressure and scrutiny. The pressure from Terry Alderman in 1989 in England so affected Graham Gooch that he stood down from the fifth Test. Geoff Lawson took Gooch's wicket three times in the same series and David Gower's seven times, yet the Alderman-Gooch confrontation is the one that is remembered.

In 1987–88 Dean Jones had a bet with Martin Crowe about who would score the most runs in the Test series. Richard Hadlee heard about the bet and decided that Jones would not win it. The great fast bowler then took Jones's wicket three times for six runs in the three Tests.

The lesson surely is that if you are going to start something with a great player, you have to be prepared for a very tough contest and to cop the consequences.

Yet Cullinan still tries to get on the metaphorical front foot to Warne. Each time this season that Warne has come out to bat against South Africa, the loudest voice abusing him has been Cullinan's.

 Warne has no complaints. `I've never been one to complain about being sledged because I dish it out,' he says. `But I've heard a few whispers that he has not been too happy with the verbals he's been receiving. In Test cricket, if you can't cop it, don't dish it out. The thing that has been happening between us has been good for the fans. They were right into it in Melbourne [at the First Test]. For me to have a psychological advantage over a batsman is enjoyable and it's good for the Australian team. He's an important player. He bats at No. 4. He's a good striker of the ball and he's made 300 in a first-class game. If you have an advantage over someone like that, you don't give that advantage away.

Bawled out: Cullinan b Warne at Melbourne in December. He was dropped for the rest of the series.

`I admit I get a buzz out of it, but so does the Australian public and the other guys in the Australian team. The South Africans don't, but they will if he makes a big score against us one day. If he does he'll probably wrap his bat around my head. Hopefully he will never make that big score. It's our job to stop him.'

 Cullinan says that most players from both teams sledge each other but that it will probably not get out of hand as there is enough mutual respect between the two sides.

`As for Boxing Day in 1993, that sort of cricket talk goes on all the time and I wasn't the only one talking. There are guys in our team who say a lot more than I do. Quite frankly, they give it and we give it back. That's cricket. What's the big deal?'

 Warne regularly receives a solid dose of sledging from Brian McMillan, yet they respect and like each other and occasionally enjoy a night out together. Cullinan has never made an effort to sit beside Warne after a day's play and hold a conversation. He might have been surprised by the welcome he would receive. Warne regards those dressing-room meetings as an important part of the game.

By sledging Warne and refusing to meet his foe, Cullinan has surely fanned the flames of this duel. Even the South African team management on this tour advised Cullinan to go easy on the sledging, but he refused.

 Cullinan says that he is not the sort of person to seek out opponents after a day's play. `Some time I'll probably have a chat to him, but at this stage I don't know. If he wants to have a chat with me or have a beer with me, he's welcome, but I've never really been one for that sort of thing. It's not personal though.'

It seems that both players have become somewhat obsessed with each other as the years have passed. But to suggest that the Australian media are at fault is to say that the South African selectors have dropped Cullinan after learning the opinions of the local media.

In the one-day game at Sydney on December 4, Cullinan had a rare pleasure: brought on to bowl his occasional offbreaks, he had Warne lbw. He took the opportunity to say to Warne, `Go and deflate yourself, you balloon.' Cullinan is said to have been annoyed that Gary Kirsten mentioned the incident in his newspaper column back home. Cullinan says that Warne returned the favour so heavily in the second innings of the Melbourne Test that he went beyond gamesmanship and was unnecessarily personal.

`I've never had a problem with the other Australians nor with Shane until the second innings in Melbourne,' Cullinan said. `I think he overstepped the mark there. He doesn't need to do that. He's a great cricketer and I'm not even averaging 40 in Test cricket. He'd have so much more respect if he didn't go to that level. He ridiculed Paul Adams in South Africa [in 1997] and he had a full go at Andrew Hudson [in 1994]. He doesn't need to do that because he is the best spin bowler ever. That's why I have some reservations. I don't know how much respect I have for him as a person.'

The result of all this has been to add greatly to the pressures on Cullinan whenever he faces Warne. Each meeting is now a major public confrontation, with all the pressure focused on the batsman and the crowd roaring in anticipation. Even Cullinan called it a nowin situation for him. After all, a bowler can be hit for four one ball and dismiss the batsman with the next. For a batsman, failure is always only a ball away and there is no escape except through making runs.

Most times Cullinan has walked out to bat Warne has asked him not to get out before he has had a bowl at him. One way or another Cullinan has fallen for the bait. It even got to the stage that when New Zealand's Chris Harris bowled a legbreak at Cullinan during a recent one-day game, keeper Adam Parore could be heard on the TV microphone saying: `Bowled Shane.'

Yet there are other ways of handling Warne and sledging. During his fine, matchsaving century at Melbourne, Jacques Kallis not only played forward whenever possible but also showed so little reaction to Australian sledging that one frustrated fieldsman finally asked: `Are you f******deaf or what?'

 Kallis's attitude was the perfect counter to sledging, and you can bet that the Australians did not waste any more breath on him.

 FOR ALL the sledging and the public nature of this one-on-one confrontation, cricket technique has still been important. When, in the second innings at Melbourne, Cullinan ignored a team plan, devised before this tour by the great Graeme Pollock, to play Warne off the front foot as often as possible, he was bowled by the sort of ball which Hansie Cronje and Kallis had been playing comfortably off the front foot. The dismissal proved that Cullinan had learned little about playing Warne. Most cricketers know that, when in doubt against a good spinner, play well forward.

In Cullinan's defence, that dismissal came during his first tilt at Warne since the series in South Africa in February and March last year when Warne dismissed him only once, for a duck in the first Test at Johannesburg. But then Warne did not always get the chance to bowl to Cullinan in that series, such was the dominance of pace. And the innings at Melbourne was also against a Warne who has all but lost his most dangerous weapon, the flipper. He could be forgiven for thinking that against Cullinan he no longer needs it.

 Cullinan's attempt to become South Africa's best batsman appears to have failed because of his own shortcomings – technical and temperamental – as much as the attentions of a high-class bowler. Had Cullinan been prepared at Melbourne to follow the team plan and push forward to Warne, he might have managed his second double-figure score in Tests in Australia. He might even have been given another chance in the test at Sydney. Had he followed team advice not to sledge so much, he might have eased the pressure on himself from his own leaders as well as, ultimately, easing some of the verbals he was copping.

Whether Cullinan can make it back to the South African side after this latest setback remains to be seen. One thing is for certain, Warne and the Australians will be waiting next time. No wonder we call it Test cricket.

When New Zealand's Chris Harris bowled a legbreak at Cullinan during a recent one-day game, the keeper could be heard saying `Bowled Shane'

`A good stroke –maker': Warne says he respects Cullinan's ability, but he has seldom been on the receiving end of it

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