It was a match in the statewide Puma Cup competition that pitted two reigning premiers against each other, with St Kilda having won the District Cricket flag the season before and White Hills the defending Bendigo District Cricket Association champions.

The St Kilda side featured a then 23-year-old Warne, who had already played four Tests for Australia and less than a month later would take eight wickets against the West Indies in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG.

READ MORE - The night Shane Warne was the star of stars at Dower Park for John Forbes match

On this Sunday in Bendigo - November 29 - Warne would be the game's leading wicket-taker as his Saints easily beat the Demons by 103 runs.

Warne - whose death from a suspected heart attack in Thailand has shocked the world - took 4-29 from nine overs in the Saints' win.

"It was only very early days in his career, but he had already played a few Tests for Australia, so there was a huge buzz at the ground that day when he played for St Kilda," Taylor recalled on Tuesday.

"There was a lot of people who came to watch that game and Warnie was terrific... he sat down and had a beer with us afterwards and bowled well to get four wickets.

"I know Shane (Max's son) quite often mentions over a beer that he hit him for four that day."

The scorecard of the game shows that in the St Kilda innings Warne batted at No.7 and was caught by Taylor off Greg O'Brien (2-36) for 2.

Among Warne's St Kilda team-mates that day was Nick Crawford, who had made the move to play District Cricket from Strathdale-Maristians.

Crawford opened the batting and made 15 in the Saints' 6-267 before Warne's four-for helped knock the Demons over for 164 in reply.

Three decades on Crawford considers it remarkable to think that less than a month before he would spin Australia to victory against the West Indies at the MCG when he took 7-52 in the second innings that Warne was playing a game in Bendigo.

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"Warnie was a big drawcard and it is amazing to think the ACB (Australian Cricket Board) would let him play a secondary club cricket fixture in Bendigo with four Tests to play in a series against the West Indies to determine who was, arguably, the best team in world cricket," Crawford said.

"The thing I remember most about him bowling in that match was the ball just fizzed out of his hand."

The White Hills v St Kilda game coincided with the first Test of the Australia-West Indies series being played at the Gabba.

The Test ended in a draw with the West Indies eight wickets down in their second innings, prompting Australian captain Allan Border to say after the game: "If we had Shane Warne here we would have won that Test match."

Three weeks after the game at White Hills Warne returned to Bendigo with the Victorian team to play the West Indies in a four-day tour game at the QEO from December 19 to 22.

The big talking point leading into the game centred around Victorian batsman Dean Jones and his push for a recall to the Australian team for the Boxing Day Test starting a week later, while the game was also a chance for Warne to press his case for selection as well.

Unfortunately, the entire game was washed out without a ball being bowled as the region was inundated with soaking rain.

Following the washed out game the Australian team for the Boxing Day Test was picked - Jones missed out, Warne was selected, took a combined 8-117 for the game, was man of the match, Australia won by 139 runs and the rest is history.

Meanwhile, the pieces of Warne memorabilia at the Rochester Sports Museum have become all the more cherished in the wake of the cricketing legend's death last Friday.

Among the memorabilia donated by the late John Forbes, who died last year, is a green Foster's Bitter cap that Warne signed giving his commitment to Puma.

Forbes was the long-time national promotions manager at Puma, with Bob Knight from the Rochester Sports Museum this week telling the story of the significance of the signed cap.

"Forbesy got a tip to say there was this young bowler playing in the seconds at St Kilda who was well worth a look at," Knight said.

"So he went and had a look for two or three weeks then came back to Herb Elliott who employed him at Puma and said, I've got a cricketer I want you to take notice of; he's got long hair, an ear ring, smokes and is a bit fat, but he can bowl really well'.

"So the first signature Puma got of Warne before he signed all the official papers was him signing that cap because that's all Forbesy had on him at the time.

"Signing that cap for Forbesy was basically Shane giving his commitment that he would sign with Puma, which he did for about four years before he joined Nike.

"Forbesy and Shane kept a fairly close relationship all throughout."

And that was evident when Warne was among the cricketing and sporting greats who played in the John Forbes Tribute Match at Kangaroo Flat's Dower Park in February of 2011.

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