Shane Warne ashes
Shane Warne took some time out from his many columns and Ashes TV commentary duties at the Adelaide Oval to offer some advice to the Durham leg-spinner Scott Borthwick. Photograph: Gareth Copley/PA

An Australian Ashes series really is an all-consuming thing. It is completely relentless, a rolling 24-hour spin cycle of inter-hemisphere cricket and après cricket. It was from this tide of 24-hour Ashes waffle that the rumour Shane Warne might be coming out of retirement for the Perth Test emerged this week. This probably won't happen, which would be good news both for Australian cricket and for people everywhere who believe in the principle that no man over the age of 40 should ever wear white trousers.

The thing is, the story doesn't end there. Warne may not be coming back, but he is not going away. Instead he will continue to hover, a tangible greatness-shaped absence, albeit one that now wears at all times the gleaming televisual smile of a popular celebrity poultry butcher. He even looms over this current squad, with its spunky leg-break tyro Steve Smith and Michael Beer, a left-arm long shot recommended by Warne in at least one of his thousands of newspaper columns.

This is all-familiar territory for English observers. The phenomenon of the disturbingly omnipresent celebrity retiree dogged us for many years, and Warne is perfectly placed to wreak destructive power on Australian cricket's own attempts to crunch its way out of reverse gear. For now we can only watch from a distance and hope it's not contagious.

None of this is Warne's fault. He remains deliciously likable, not just for his brilliance as a bowler, but also for the way he looked towards the end during those appalled, eye-popping, rug-fluffing, bent-sideways lbw appeals, reminiscent of a freshly coiffured middle-aged plumber embroiled in a gut-popping clinch with your replacement hot water cylinder.

Plus, there is the charm of his enduringly youthful looks. In semi-retirement Warne appears not only to have discovered some kind of miracle toothpaste, but also to have relaxed to such a degree that all signs of stress and strain have disappeared from his burnished features, leaving instead a sun-flushed pancake of unlined contentment. It is this face that hangs, moon-like, above Australian cricket, disturbingly radiant, unimpeachably retired, a burger-chomping visitation on every sightscreen.

It probably would have worked out in the short term, too. The aged Warne would still take three for 98 from 14.3 extremely grunty overs at Perth. He would get Kevin Pietersen out and also terminally derange Ian Bell. But still, there is a nightmarish quality about the prospect of his zombie reanimation, the thought of him chugging to the crease in that round-armed IPL incarnation, a bowling action reminiscent of a man hailing a late-night taxi while also trying very hard not to spill his kebab.

There are wider forces at work. Talk of Warne's return adds to the general suspicion that, with recent roles reversed, the current Australia team are now roughly equivalent to England in about 1991. They really used to pick old players.

In the early 1990s the selectors would periodically develop a hunger for John Emburey, who would then be exhumed and placed on ceremonial display. On the 1994-95 Ashes tour Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting were asked to waddle and stomp their way around Australia's vast outfields.

If Australia really are turning into England, this would leave England as Australia, which is a harder case to make. Andrew Strauss (likable left‑handed captain) could pass for Mark Taylor. Perhaps Bell may one day make a Coke Zero version David Boon. I have Alastair Cook down as Steve Waugh, the gritty skipper-in-waiting, which is a little more convincing now Cook has graduated from robot defence to an array of unstoppable cross-bat attacking strokes.

There is no Warne in the England side, but then there is also no Warne anywhere outside of the commentary box, pretty much every newspaper you care to pick up and his own "Spinners" underwear franchise (a terrible name evocative of the poorly supported gusset and always second best while "Googlies" is available).

It is this that seems most pertinently England-esque. Our own departed hero, Ian Botham, stalked English cricket for a decade, fuelling in outline the fruitless search for other Bothams, quick fixes, a rewind button. It seems likely Warne is already casting a similar shadow across Australian cricket. Not exactly there, but not exactly absent either. And generally making them look a little more like our old selves than their own.