The Hampshire captain Shane Warne will miss the beginning of the English Cricket season because of his poker commitments.
Warne, aged 38, retired from Test cricket in 2007, and has been playing poker for five years. He recently started getting lessons from Joe Hachem - his friend, and a former World Series of Poker champion.
"I'm really excited," said Warne, "hopefully this will replace the competitive spirit that I had with cricket. Nothing will replace the 20 years of cricket in my life but there are a lot of similarities. It's a game of skill that has a lot of analogies to cricket. You have to be very disciplined".
Warne plans to return to the team later in the season, but they will have to start the season with a different player. Rod Bransgrove, the Hampshire chairman, said that they had plans for a replacement already in the works, but there were some contract issues that needed finalizing.
The chairman will be discussing Warne's schedule next month to work out a cricket program that works for both him and the team. It is expected he will miss the Twenty20 campaign in June, but he will be taking part in the Cricket Australia program which helps the development of younger players.
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