MacGill's decision leaves Australia with a selection headache

Australia leg-spinner Stuart MacGill is to retire from Test cricket at the end of the current match against West Indies in Antigua.

The 37-year-old's decision was announced during a rain hold-up at the start of the third day's play.

It leaves uncapped Beau Casson as the only specialist spinner in the squad for the third Test in Barbados.

And it could lead to calls for Shane Warne to make himself available for the 2009 Ashes series in England.

Warne is Australia's leading wicket-taker in Tests with 708 victims, but he quit the international scene in January last year.

He recently hinted that he could be willing to come out of retirement to face England again by saying: "If they really needed me and there was no-one else around, you'd weigh up the options."

But only hours before MacGill's retirement was made public, Warne insisted he was "very happy with retirement".

606: DEBATE He will probably be remembered as the unluckiest man in world cricket in living in the shadow of the great Shane Warne englandmad666

MacGill's own international career has largely been overshadowed by Warne's record-breaking achievements, but he too has been a fine bowler with 207 Test wickets to his credit before the start of the match in Antigua.

He made his debut against South Africa in Adelaide in 1998, taking nine wickets in the match, but his best performance came against England at Sydney a year later when he had match figures of 12-107 as Australia wrapped up a 3-1 series win.

MacGill also showed himself to be a highly principled individual when he refused to tour Zimbabwe in 2004 on moral and ethical grounds.

Explaining his surprise decision to retire, he said: "Over the past six months I have experienced enough highs and lows to fill a lifetime.

"My 200th Test wicket couldn't have been scripted any better. I will never forget the happiness I felt when my family welcomed me at the hotel that night, yet the very next week I was filled with the pain and disappointment of injury.

"Although I considered retirement at the time, I decided to prove to myself that I could rise again and trained privately harder than I have done in years.

There is no way I will ever walk on to a cricket field unless I can guarantee that I can dismiss top order batsmen consistently Stuart MacGill

MacGill continued: "Unfortunately now my time is up....as I said many times last summer, there is no way I will ever walk on to a cricket field unless I can guarantee that I can dismiss top order batsmen consistently.

"The prospect of letting myself and the team down is simply not an option. I have worked way too hard for too long to sabotage my achievements by playing Test cricket for the wrong reasons."

Cricket Australia vice-chairman Jack Clarke paid tribute to MacGill, who has yet to decide whether to prolong his domestic cricket career, saying Australia had been "incredibly lucky to have two brilliant leg-spinners on the international scene at the same time".

He added: "Stuart's record at international level is quite outstanding with over 200 Test wickets and he will depart this Australia side as one of the greats of the game."