An oddball to the end, Stuart MacGill has always been more difficult to read than his wrong’un.

His snap decision, mid Test, to retire caught everybody off guard. But being straight with people has always been a MacGill trademark and it should come as no surprise that in, this instance, he is being straight with himself.

The cruel truth about MacGill’s last Test match

ButHe’s lost it and he knows it. MacGill no longer has what it takes to be a Test match bowler and he called time on himself before the selectors did.

“When you play for your country you’ve got a huge responsibility not only to yourself but the guy at the other end and I couldn’t live with myself if I felt that I let somebody down in that respect,” he said.

If it seems an odd way to go out, it’s not too different from the departure of the universally admired Adam Gilchrist, who came to the same realisation and retired during the fourth Test against India in Adelaide in January.

Gilchrist was able to pinpoint the precise moment when he knew it was time. He put down a straightforward catch off VVS Laxman and made up his mind there and then.

MacGill has not said whether there was a particular moment when the lightning bolt hit him, but during the first Test in Jamaica he knew things weren’t right.

The second Test confirmed it. He is too proud a man to despoil his reputation with such an embarrassing loss of form.

During this match the online commentary provided by Cricinfo has variously described his bowling as “dross”, “all over the place” and worse than “horrid”.

MacGill deserves better that that. He is one of only 12 Australians to have taken more than 200 Test wickets and only three bowlers in Test history have reached the milestone in fewer Tests – Clarrie Grimmett, Dennis Lillee and Waqar Younis.

Paradoxically, MacGill dropped his bombshell just as he felt his team mates had at last worked out what makes him tick.

“A lot of my Australian team mates are finally comfortable with the way I am,” he said. “They realise who I am, what I mean.”

MacGill’s differences from his fellow professional cricketers are well chronicled. He drinks wine, reads books and exudes an almost intellectual air that sets him apart from the other baggy-greeners of his era.

He was the only Australian cricketer who withdrew from the 2004 tour of Zimbabwe on moral grounds, though on the other side of the ledger he has a lengthy rap sheet of behavioural misdemeanours.

He has one other difference that makes his decision to walk away from cricket less traumatic.

As a presenter of an award-winning lifestyle show he has a ready-made and well paid alternative career.

© AAP 2012

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