Spin Doctor: The man behind Shane Warne's flipper

Jack Potter will never forget the first time he met Shane Warne.

It was 1990 and Potter was sitting in his office at the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide when Warne, an overweight and relatively unknown leg-spinner who'd just driven across from Melbourne, knocked on Potter's door.

"The first thing he said to me was 'do you have an ashtray?" Potter remembers with a laugh.

"I told him if I caught him smoking at the Academy, he would be kicked out. And he said 'Jack, I promise you'll never catch me smoking'. And I never did."

Image Id: 3B5AE113090A40C6A689834B69185259 Image Caption: Potter, back row on the far right, with the inaugural Academy squad in 1988

Despite being a Sheffield Shield winning captain, an Ashes tourist and a legend of Melbourne grade cricket, Potter's greatest legacy is his role as a coach to some of the country's greatest modern-day players, which he documents in his new book Born Lucky.

As the famed Cricket Academy's first head coach between 1988 and 1990, Potter mentored the likes of Michael Slater, Justin Langer, Damien Martyn and Michael Bevan. But his most influential moment came when he introduced Warne to the flipper – a fast, straight delivery released from the front of the hand, which the spin legend would unleash on the world in the 1990s.

Potter's main skill in his 104-game first-class career was as a batsman, but he was also a useful slow bowler, a disciple of mystery spinner Jack Iverson and contemporary of the great leg-spinner, Richie Benaud.

When Warne first showed Potter his wares at the Academy, the coach was stunned by the considerable turn and bounce the Victorian could produce with his leg-break. But when Potter put it to Warne that he needed to add more variety to his arsenal, and showed him how to bowl a flipper and a slider for the first time, the young spinner went to work.

"He was so cheeky," Potter, now 83, tells cricket.com.au from his home on New Zealand's north island.

"He came up to me about three days later and said, 'You better come over and have a look at what I've got'. And sure enough; he still had the big leg breaks, but he also had the two that went straight on. And he went on to get 700 Test wickets."

Two-and-a-half years after first meeting Potter, Warne famously bamboozled West Indies captain Richie Richardson with a superb flipper in the 1992 Boxing Day Test, a dismissal he says started him on the path to becoming one of the greatest players in the game's history.

Warne says learning the flipper from Potter and meeting long-time mentor Terry Jenner were the main positives to come from his ill-fated time at the Academy, which was curtailed for disciplinary reasons and marred by a feeling that he wasn't accepted by some in the newly-established pathway system.

But he adds that learning the importance of a regular training routine, instilled in him by Potter, was also invaluable.

"I put the hard word on him ... and he turned himself around, he worked hard and he got himself fit," Potter says.

"He knew that if he didn't work as hard as the rest of the guys, I'd be on his back. He knew he couldn't get away with anything with me, even though he liked me."

Image Id: CCA02083CB8F489493F7BE40646E9D6F

Potter's second coming as an influential figure in Australian cricket came more than 20 years after his retirement from the first-class arena at the age of just 29, with a record featuring 14 first-class hundreds and an average of 41.

An Australian representative in baseball and a two-time premiership captain at Melbourne club Fitzroy, Potter enjoyed a successful career for Victoria, losing just two of 14 matches as skipper and leading an inexperienced side to the Shield title in 1966-67.

He was also regarded as one of the best fielders of his era and it was in the field, sadly, that he made his biggest impact at international level. Named 12th man for three Tests – he once ran out South African legend Eddie Barlow at the MCG – he was picked for the 1964 Ashes tour and would have likely made his Test debut later that year if he hadn't suffered a nasty head injury while batting in a tour game in the Netherlands.

Despite being regarded as one of the best players of his era not to play Test cricket, Pollard insists the title of his book – Born Lucky – is fitting.

"Most of my life, I believe I've been lucky in everything I've done," he says.

Image Id: AD64CABFCA7148BB90662351102DF9A2 Image Caption: Potter on the 1964 Ashes tour // Getty

"I was lucky in cricket, I was lucky in baseball. I don't think I was as good as other players, but I performed as well as them.

"I should have been dead a couple of times; I got hit in the head with a baseball, I got hit in the head and fractured my skull in cricket. But I'm alright.

"People would say I was a good captain, but I think I was a lucky captain. I would move someone and next ball, they'd get a catch.

"My life has been a good one."

Born Lucky by Jack & Sarah Potter, with a foreword from Bill Lawry, is available from cricketbooks.com.au

Jack Potter

First-class

M: 104 | Runs: 6142 | Ave: 41.22 | 100s: 14 | 50s: 33 | HS: 221 | Wkts: 31 | Ave: 41.51 | BBI: 4-20