Stuart MacGill : The unluckiest

I am with you dips. Macgill is a fine leggy to me. He is just unlucky to be born in the same era as warne. His strike rate is real good. He can rip the ball a mile as well.... also possess the best "wrong un" or second best and its hard to pick too. When Warnie wasn't around, the lad bowled well. When warnie and him are around, he outbowls Warne so I can't see why him and warne can't play together. You see, the reason why he may out bowl shane when they are playing is because the batsmen knows that the only how they are gonna gets runs is against macgill cause in those times it was mcgrath and gillespie was no joke either.

I want to see more of macgill. Why couldn't he have been born in the windies.

Amazingly, the leg-spinner's overall Test record begs the question as to why he continues to find himself more out of the Aussie team than in it. In 32 Tests, he's bagged 152 scalps with a strike rate of 55.5.

Incredibly, that puts him way ahead of other leading spin bowlers, including Muttiah Muralitharan (58) and Anil Kumble (65), thus adding to the irony of his exile from the Test arena.

His only sin, it seems, is that he is 'expensive', with wickets costing him 29.19 apiece. There's Shane Warne with 389 more scalps so he appears to have every right to be picked first. Yet his strike rate of a shade under 60 certainly puts a new turn on things.

Indeed, MacGill has often stepped up to the plate with Warne absent. The 1998/99 Ashes series saw the still relatively raw leg-spinner come back from being left out of Australia's second Test win in Perth to spearhead the Aussie attack with 27 wickets in the series, including a stunning 12-wicket haul in Sydney.

England, however, are not MacGill's forte.  The majority of his success has come against Brian Lara's men, with 48 wickets from 12 Tests against Brian Lara's men, nabbing the legendary lefty four times.

What about the fact that he's accounted for more than a quarter of his team's wickets when he has played and that Australia have lost just six of those matches to boot?

Shane Warne’s 12-month drugs ban last year left MacGill with a chance to finally strut his stuff on the Test stage. He responded with 53 wickets in 11 Tests for a total haul of 57 that made him the second highest wicket-taker for 2003. Unfortunately, that is where things, quite literally, spun to a halt.

Warne returned to tackle Sri Lanka and nobody, especially the Sri Lankan batsmen, could stop the rampant veteran who obliterated all and sundry with 26 scalps at 20 apiece in three Tests. In contrast, MacGill could only manage five at a more pedestrian average of 46.4.

Once could also question his absence from Australia's tour party in India. He may have just 14 wickets from four Tests against the same opposition, but Warne's record going into the recent series was 29 from just 12 Tests. Add in the nature of the wickets incurred during that series and who knows what might have been.(Source : cricket65)

He has always been my favourite leg spinner although Shane Warne has been the greatest .When he was asked that why dosent he laugh or enjoy when he takes a wicket ,he said : "Its tough to even smile ."