Warne himself to be blamed for injury

It was an act of so-called bravado that has cost Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne a chance to lift the Border-Gavaskar trophy with his teammates and also add up to his record wicket-tally due to a thumb injury.

Warne, who fractured his thumb at the nets on Tuesday and was ruled out of the fourth and final Test, only had himself to blame for the injury as he dug his own grave by taking out the protective guard from thumb of his bowling gloves while going to bat.

The leg-spinner had removed the thumb guard of his batting glove and was boasting to team-mates Damien Martyn and Ricky Ponting about how he had not got hit on the thumb in his entire 15-year career when the trajedy struck him.

"He was just a little spinner (whose ball struck me). The really bad thing is that during the last Test match myself, Damien Martyn and Ricky Ponting were all trying on different gloves.

"They had this thumb piece that goes in the thumb - it's really uncomfortable. I said: 'Look at mine, I take it out. It's that good." I'd only just taken it out of these new gloves. I'd taken them all out and they said: 'Yeah its better, but you've got to put them all back in.' I said: 'Nah, I've never been hit there in my whole career. Fifteen years and I've never been hit. In the first net session I've had since then I get whacked on it straight away,'" Warne was quoted as saying by Australian media on Wednesday.