The spin legend was on a three-month holiday in Thailand.
The cricketing world was in shock as details of spin legend Shane Warne's final moments were revealed.
According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald, Warne was watching the first Australia-Pakistan Test on television before he was found unconscious at villa on the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. He suffered a suspected heart attack, prompting Andrew Neophitou, who had traveled with the cricket legend to Thailand, to perform CPR for around 20 minutes.
Warne's business manager James Erskine said Warne was starting a three-month break in Thailand following his work as a broadcaster after the Ashes series between Australia and England.
Erskine said Neophitou, who was also an executive producer on the documentary SHANE, found the cricket icon unresponsive and attempted to resuscitate him for 'about 20 minutes' before an ambulance arrived.
'I got a phone call at 10.37 pm (Australian time) last night from our guy in Melbourne called Andrew Neophitou, who was actually with Shane in Thailand,' Erskine told Fox Cricket.
'Shane had sort of decided he was going to have three months off and in fact he wanted a year off, and I said 'there's no way you can have a year off, they would've forgotten you by a year!', so he decided to have three months off,' Erskine revealed.
After his extended holiday in Thailand, Warne was scheduled to travel to the UK to commentate on the English summer of cricket.
'They were meant to meet some people at 5 pm. Neo was next door, he's always on time,' Erskine said.
'He (Neophitou) realised he wasn't well. He tried to give mouth-to-mouth, tried to resuscitate him, he had no heartbeat, the ambulance came 20 minutes later and an hour and a bit later he was pronounced dead (at the Thai International Hospital),' Erskine said.
Warne was last seen about two hours earlier, Erskine, the cricketer's long time business manager, said.
'He was on holiday, having a lie-down, siesta, he hadn't been drinking, he'd been on this diet to lose weight,' he said.
'He didn't drink much. Everyone thinks he's a big boozer but he's not a big boozer at all. I sent him a crate of wine, 10 years later it's still there. He doesn't drink, never took drugs, ever. He hated drugs so nothing untoward,' Erskine said.
'He was going to do the things he likes doing. He was going to play in one or two poker competitions, play a lot of golf, be with his kids, that was about it; (to) have time to himself.'
His children Brooke, Summer and Jackson were shattered by news of the father's passing away, Erskine said. Warne's father Keith visited his grandchildren on Saturday to comfort them after the news broke.
'It is one of these things that when someone is larger than life you don't expect them to die. You don't expect someone to die at 52,' Erskine said.
'You don't expect Shane Warne to die because he was an extraordinary human being.'
