And so, at last, after farewells to international cricket and the first-class scene spread across four years and three continents, Shane Warne will finally end his blockbuster of a professional career with a whimper when the Rajasthan Royals slip out of the IPL reckoning in Mumbai on Friday.
Glowing eulogies will fill the air, and perhaps a few relieved sighs from martinets among the game's administrators. For English cricket watchers there will be a mixture of both.
In two decades of devilish tweak, extravagant celebrations and tabloid-filling good times, Warne had a hold over English batsmen and fans like few others before and none since.
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West Indies were once known as the "calypso cricketers". It was a slightly patronising description which reflected the fact that while, at ther best, they could provide rich entertainment, all too often they went home a beaten side.
Then something happened. They became good, very good indeed as the authoritative captaincy of Clive Lloyd turned them into a brilliant match-winning machine. They had the game's most dominant batsman, Viv Richards, and the most fearsome fast bowlers in the world.
The great era of Caribbean cricket, which began with their success in the inaugural World Cup of 1975 and continued into the early 1990s, is viewed with a greater sense of nostalgia now than ever before in light of the prolonged demise the game has endured in the Caribbean since then.
And so it is that when watching Stevan Riley's new film Fire in Babylon, which goes on general UK release on Friday, you cannot help but feel those glory days are lost in time, evoking a brand of cricket West Indies will never replicate.
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England have broken new ground by revealing three separate captains for international cricket, and now they must try to show that it can work.
Andrew Strauss's decision to concentrate exclusively on Test cricket has allowed the leadership position for one-day internationals to pass to Alastair Cook, long considered Strauss's heir apparent.
But the vote of confidence shown in the 26-year-old from Essex comes with a caveat. Cook has been judged as someone who can score quickly enough for 50-over cricket but not for 20-over cricket. This is despite an average of 33.36 at a strike-rate of 129.90 per 100 balls in domestic Twenty20.
It leaves a third position vacant, and rather surprisingly Stuart Broad gets the nod for the Twenty20 captaincy. He is a player who has frequently struggled to control his emotions in the heat of battle. Broad, 24, will also be the first specialist bowler to captain England since Bob Willis.
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