Australian cricket great Shane Warne died due to natural causes, an autopsy has showed, Thai police said on Monday.

Warne died last Friday on the Thai island aged 52. His family had accepted the finding, a deputy police spokesperson said.

“Today (Monday) investigators received the autopsy result, in which the medical opinion is that the cause of death is natural,” Kissana Phathanacharoen said. “Investigators will summarise the autopsy result for prosecutors within the timeframe of the law.”

The cricketer’s body would be flown to Australia on Tuesday, lieutenant-general Surachate Hakparn told a news conference, also ruling out any foul play.

The autopsy report showed the Australian died of a “congenital disease”, Songyot Chayaninporamet, deputy director of Samui Hospital, told a news conference. “There is no Covid-19 infection and no sign of assault or murder.”

Allan McKinnon, Australia’s ambassador to Thailand, who has been on Koh Samui since the day after Warne’s death, thanked the authorities. Warne’s sudden death rocked the cricketing world and fans, who left tributes of flowers, flags, an Australian sports shirt, a can of beans and a packet of cigarettes outside the villa where Warne was found unconscious.

Former Australia captain Michael Clarke, who shared a great camaraderie with the legend, has been shaken by the death of his “true friend”.

“Cricket has always been a game of numbers and one simple number sums up my relationship with Shane Warne — 23,” Clarke wrote in a column for The Daily Telegraph. “...it was not a done thing in cricket for a shirt number to be handed down. But all that changed when Warnie came up to me and told me he wanted me to take on his No. 23 that he wore in one-day cricket.... I will hang onto that honour for the rest of my life.

“Everyone is rightly talking about the legend that Warnie was. If he’s not the greatest ever Australian cricketer, then he is equal to Sir Donald Bradman. He is — as his No. 23 said — the Michael Jordan of cricket,” Clarke said referring to the American basketball legend. “But all that stuff is secondary to the friend he became to me and so many others around the game,” Clarke, 40, wrote.

The state funeral of the much-loved cricketer — whom the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, called “one of our nation’s greatest characters” — will be held at the iconic MCG in front of an expected crowd of 1 lakh people, according to reports in the Australian media. It is likely to be held within two or three weeks.

The public memorial will be held after the family mourn him at a private service. His manager James Erskine did not confirm MCG as the venue for the state funeral but hinted that no other stadium would be an appropriate one. “But where else?” he told The Age.

The MCG is not only Warne’s favourite ground and the scene of his famous hat-trick against England in the 1994 Boxing Day Test, but there also stands a statue of him.