The Governor-General was a wonderful cricketer, but I'd stop short of calling him a great Test all-rounder - in fact his career statistical trends bear some similarities to that of the great Wilfred Rhodes - who I've discussed at length as a Test all-rounder here more than once before. Macartney was a frontline(ish) bowler early in his career when his batting was relatively poor, and by the time he became a great batsman after the First World War he did very little bowling.
To illustrate the point, Macartney took 24 wickets in his first eight Tests (11 of them coming in one match) - while averaging just 20 with the bat, but then just 21 more wickets in the 27 Tests which followed.
The story of Macartney the batsman is equally illuminating - prior to the War, when he did more bowling, he played 21 Tests, hit one century and averaged 26. After the war he played another 14 Tests, hit six centuries and averaged nearly 70! However those 14 post-war Tests yielded just 11 wickets - in four Tests Macartney didn't bowl at all, and in four more he bowled less than 10 overs.
I don't write this to denigrate a great cricketer, but I do think we have to be careful when placing him in such exalted all-round company as he is being placed here.
In fact, if you're looking for a magnificent but underrated Aussie all-rounder, then step forward Montague Alfred Noble.
Yeah, he was basically the Australian version of Rhodes. Post-war he was an absolutely incredible batsman.
In an all-rounder's XI, however, half of the side probably won't be bowling a whole lot. I don't remember who said it, but someone on here made a post saying that bowling all-rounders are like economies of scale, whereas batting all-rounders are diseconomies, as the more there are the less their bowling impacts things. When picking my Top 4, I primarily looked at the best batsmen who could also be classified as 'all-rounders', and even if he didn't perform as a batsman or bowler at the same time, he was still useful, at least, in the discipline that was his 'weaker' at that point in time.
To me, guys like Macartney and Rhodes count as all-rounders, since they had the ability to do both, but they just didn't do it at the same time.
Macartney the batsman was one of the best, and his bowling at that time didn't come into the equation a whole lot for me. A top 4 of Grace, Macartney, Kallis and Sobers is designed to get maximum runs on the board - I didn't worry too much about the bowling output.
Similarly, I selected the 3 best bowlers I could come up with who classify as all-rounders. Hence Hadlee, Khan and Procter. Throwing in Keith Miller, Aubrey Faulkner and Clive Rice gives me a middle-order spin option, so I don't have to overload Sobers or use Macartney as a bowler, Rice acts as a fourth seamer and Miller plays as a shock bowler who primarily bats.
Botham, IMO, was the next cab off the rank in both areas, as such I selected him as 12th man.
And Monty Noble is incredibly underrated. Fantastic player. If I replace Rice with him, and remove WG to make a test-exclusive XI, you get:
C Macartney | W Rhodes | J Kallis | G Sobers | K Miller | A Faulkner | A Gilchrist | M Noble | I Khan | M Procter | R Hadlee
Botham and Gregory to round out the 13-man squad.
Rhodes, like Macartney, just classifies as an 'all-rounder' to me (given he could do both, but not necessarily simultaneously), but is picked as a batsman, basically.
Reverse the batting order, and that would probably be the bowling order, IMO.
Smali: Miller still captaining
