Stuart MacGill has revealed that he and Shane Warne used to hide vodka in their Gatorade bottles while on tour, with the former Australian leg-spinner opening up about his relationship with the late cricket legend.
MacGill and Warne were Australian teammates in the 1990s and early 2000s, with Warne's status as the greatest leg-spinner of all-time limiting MacGill to just 44 Test appearances in just over ten years. The majority of MacGill's game time came when Warne was either injured or suspended for a year for failing a drugs test, with the pair only playing 16 Test matches together.
MacGill later revealed that to be his "biggest regret", with the pair becoming firm friends off the field. "Most of the Test matches that Shane and I played together, he was either coming into an injury or coming out of an injury so it wasn't fair," he said in an appearance on the 82 Days Till The Ashes podcast.
"Still speak to his parents, they're lovely people, it's a great family. And I said this to Keith, his old man, that Shane commentating used to drive me up the wall because he wasn't talking like he used to talk to me.
"I think I even heard him say 'indeed' one day on the TV, but we had a lot of laughs because he was exactly as you saw him." And when shown a picture of he and Warne having a chat in the dressing room while MacGill was holding a bottle of Gatorade, he revealed they used to sneak vodka into their Gatorade bottles.
"That was probably in the subcontinent," he said of the photo. "It's very, very important all you young players out there to hydrate when you're playing in hot weather and so I found vodka and Gatorade - it's very, very good."
MacGill also spoke about how close the pair became away from cricket, stating they would often share tips about the best places to go for a drink rather than sharing discussions about leg spin bowling.
"Tips like 'Warney, don't worry about the line we'll just go straight to the front', 'that barman always gives you the odd cheeky shot'," he added. "That sort of stuff, those were the sort of tips that we operated on.
"We did actually talk a lot in South Africa as well. Do go out in Johannesburg, don't go out in Durban - 'detox Durban' we called it. That was the sort of conversation that we normally had.
"Not much cricket, to be honest. I remember sitting on the outfield in Sri Lanka one morning, which may well be where that photo was taken, and I think he was just about to get his 500th [Test] wicket.
"I said to him 'you know mate, you're going to get 700 Test wickets'. We both just sat there and rolled around on the floor [laughing] and I was serious but he just thought it was a joke."
