Former Australia leg-spinner Stuart MacGill has revealed how he targeted reaching the landmark of 400 Test wickets after the international retirement of Shane Warne.

MacGill’s career was famously overshadowed by Warne, who ended his Test career in January 2007 as the format’s leading wicket-taker at the time with 708 wickets.

Warne’s retirement presented MacGill, then 35, with the chance to become Australia’s leading Test spinner having largely played second fiddle to Warne since his debut in January 1998.

Speaking in an interview on the Cricket Life Stories YouTube channel, MacGill opened up on the “opportunities” Warne’s retirement presented, and how he envisioned more than doubling his existing haul of Test wickets, while recognising that he would still face certain challenges. Warne remains the only Australian spinner to have reached the milestone of 400 Test scalps.

“When Shane retired, I remember exactly where I was – I was absolutely gobsmacked,” MacGill said. “He hadn’t told me. I was shocked. I remember standing outside my house – I needed time by myself because, obviously, I thought of the opportunities it presented.

“In my mind, having never been Australia’s premier spin bowler and knowing that the Australian selectors had tried so many other spin bowlers during my career, I didn’t assume anything. I thought, ‘There’s a little bit of a window here but it’s not necessarily going to get any easier. I wonder what’s going to happen’. I also knew that Shane’s only a year or 18 months older than me, and I knew what was happening physically.

“I’m going to sound like the most arrogant bloke on the planet… I had 198 wickets at the time. I hadn’t got to 200. I remember thinking, when Shane pulled the pin, ‘I’m going to get 400’. I didn’t tell anybody, and I’m telling you now because it’s so long ago. But I did think, ‘You know what, this is going to be cool’. And the reason I thought it was going to be cool wasn’t because I wanted to be better than anyone else. I respect history, tradition and opportunity and I knew that not many people got the opportunity that I was being presented with, and I really, really wanted it.”

However, MacGill ended up announcing his own retirement in June the following year during the Antigua Test against West Indies, six months after he’d had surgery on his right hand for carpal tunnel syndrome. With 208 wickets from 44 Tests, he stands 16th on Australia’s leading Test wicket-takers list. 

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MacGill admitted to regrets over opportunities he missed out in the year following his retirement.

“I stood in the sun for a job, you can’t complain but, oh my goodness, I never played a Test match in India, I never played a Test match in South Africa, I never played a Test match in England, I never played a Test match against New Zealand,” MacGill added. “In the 12 months following my unfortunate “demise” I would’ve done all of that. And not only that, my family’s Welsh and the first Test of that Ashes series [2009] was at Sophia Gardens and I think about it, not all day, every day, but there’s a couple of hours every day.”