Both players thrived on helpful pitches pace and bounce.. and in both cases, what set them apart from the rest was surely NOT this: it was the way they coped when they didn't have those advantages. Many bowlers could bowl better deliveries... but it was the mental toughness ability to use their grooved action to simply suffocate batsmen for over after over after over.

I'd rate stacks of bowlers as worthy of comparison with McGrath and Warne in conditions that gave the bowler the chance to really dominate... but McGrath and Warne were able to dominate when nothing they did with any indivual ball seemed that special - when each ball, in isolation, seemed eminently playable, and not really anything special compared with all the others.

For what it's worth... I might put Warne down on the teamsheet first for the simple reason that you could get 40 overs a day out of him, because he's a first rate slip catcher and because he's a decent no 7-8 batsman... but Sri Lanka could have had one of the two of them for the last 10 years... they'd surely have been better off with McGrath!