During their period of domination across the Taylor, Waugh and Ponting eras, the Australian team featured a number of supporting actors who hovered around the fringes of the national side. Men like Damien Fleming, Darren Lehmann and Stuart Clark, to name a few, were essential to the story, without really being able to nail down a permanent place in the side. This actually earned them a fair amount of support from us fans from overseas, considering our teams never enjoyed the kind of riches the Aussies did. In my opinion, no one from this lot was as compelling and intriguing a cricketer as Stuart MaGill.
I first noticed MacGill during Australia’s tour of Pakistan in 1998; by the middle of the Ashes series later that year, when the Englishmen had found there was to be no respite in Warne’s absence, I was a fan. The late 90′s were a great time for legspin, and while Warne, Kumble and Mushtaq Ahmed were undoubtedly leaders of the pack, it was MacGill who somehow personified my platonic ideal of that bowling style. Where Warne’s approach was of a smooth, complete piece, where Kumble would zero in at near-medium pace ball-after-ball, MacGill would simply let rip. His action, with wrist cocked at the point of release and the hand resembling a hooded cobra about to strike, spewing venom in the form of a red leather ball across 22 yards, made for electrifying viewing. Watching him bowl, particularly when he would toss it up, invoked a feeling of adventure and anticipation; he always seemed on the edge of losing control, yet a wicket was never far away. And, every now and then, he’d slip in a wicked googly for good measure.
Of course, his cavalier methods were as extravagant as they were attacking, and his captains generally preferred to keep things simple. That, and the presence of Warne, limited him to 44 tests over a decade. In many ways, he was a frustrating player to root for. He had a reputation for being the intelligent sort, a reader and wine-lover, yet would be grumpy and often lose the plot on the field. He outbowled Warne comprehensively in the 16 tests they played together, yet when given the role of frontline spinner he’d proceed to bowl himself out of contention. His strike-rate and wickets-per-test would be top-notch, but his record against the best would, somehow, just not stand up to scrutiny. He collected 4 for 19 and a man-of-the-match award on his one-day debut, but would play just two more games on account of his poor fielding. ‘Walking contradiction’ doesn’t begin to cover it.
But perhaps his career and achievements need to be looked at in the context of the environment he played in. Such was the competition for places and the talent at their disposal, the Australian selectors of the time could afford to make ruthless, even strange, decisions. Thus, Brad Hodge would be dropped two tests after making a double-hundred, Jason Gillespie’s career would hit a roadblock after one bad series, and Darren Lehmann would be allowed to don the Baggy Green just 27 times. MacGill himself was a regular victim of selectorial whims: after an excellent performance on his Ashes debut at Brisbane, he was dropped for the next test at Perth because an all-pace attack was favoured; his reward for a seven-wicket haul in the final test against the West Indies at Sydney in 2001 was to be overlooked for the upcoming India tour; and, most gallingly, Nathan Hauritz was selected ahead of him for the India trip in 2004. Yet the fact that he could manage to put together a record of 208 wickets over 44 tests, despite being in and out of the side and a supposed misfit to boot, is surely worth acknowledging even by his biggest critics.
Watching him on the field, grim and unsmiling even on taking a wicket, you became aware of a man battling both inner demons and an uncertain immediate future. In a team given to mutual back-slapping and a boisterous dressing-room culture, that he was able to be himself and still carve out a reasonable career was, for me, a real achievement. And so, when he took 8/108 in the Fatullah test of 2006 on being recalled again, I saw it not as an instance of him bullying a weak opponent; it was payday. Unfortunately, it was also to be his last significant act in Australian whites, as he never fully recovered from an injury sustained in John Buchanan’s boot camp later that year.
When his retirement came, it did so in the most tragi-comic way possible. He made the announcement in the middle of a test match in the West Indies, having decided he was past it. In the process, he was fined for sleeping in late, and the news was overshadowed by that of Warne – who else? – captaining the Rajasthan Royals to victory in the inaugural IPL; as a way of rounding off the story, it felt appropriate. Five years on, I think it can be safely said that he managed to leave his mark on the game as a real individual, and the memories of his vicious leg-break and wrong ‘un burn brightly. That, you suspect, is just the way he would have wanted it.