MacGilla was very very good but he wasn't in the same class as Warnie
Nah he was a class or two above MacGill.
Leg spin is the hardest artform in cricket and perhaps what made Warne the most special was his phenomenal control.
MacGill generally offered up a '4 ball' to be smacked every second over where as Warne was super consistent which piled up the pressure.
His econ was 2.65rpo compared to MacGill at 3.22rpo.
MacGill was a great bowler in his own right though. If only he was 10-15 years younger he would have played 120 tests and taken over 500 wickets.
MacGill didn't have the control and variation of Warne, but - alongside Mushtaq Ahmed - had the most lethal wrong-un/googly in international cricket.
A shame his career overlapped with Warne's. Had MacGill been born at least 10 years earlier or later, would've easily been a 100+ test player. I add in 10 years earlier, as he would've been lethal on Aussie pitches in the '80s, especially the SCG when it started to become a rank-turner in the mid '80s. Would've been an extremely handy bowler to help Allan Border through the aftermath of the South African Rebel Tours, where the team went through a massive re-building phase.
By the time he was first choice spinner after Warne retired in 2007, MacGill's best years were well and truly behind him due to injuries in his knee and fingers, but during his early years in the Aussie side, he was easily in the top 3 spinners in the world (especially during the 98/99 Ashes). Would've come in very handy during the 2005 Ashes after McGrath got injured, whilst the Poms struggled against Warne.
As I mentioned in another post a little while back, the 1970s was the cursed decade for a potential Australian test cricketer to be born in, whose career directly coincided with the Taylor/S Waugh captaincy. So many players from that era that piled on thousands of runs or took plenty of wickets in Sheffield Shield but only got limited opportunities in the baggy green, or in the case of Gilchrist and Hussey, had to wait years to get their chance at the highest level.