Great Lee

On Friday, 23rd of October, the stage was set for the final of the Airtel Champions League T20 tournament. Trinidad & Tobago (T&T) captain, Darren Ganga, won the toss and decided to field first. The New South Wales (NSW) openers, David Warner and Phil Hughes, tried to aggressively go after the T&T bowlers just like they had in the semi-finals, but without too much success. Simon Katich hit a couple of sixes off Dwayne Bravo but got out trying to hit a third one, to be quickly followed by Henriques who didn’t contribute much with the bat. Rohrer fell after a quick-fire 16, and was followed by DLR Smith 7 balls later.

The scorecard read 83-6 after 11.2 overs and it looked like NSW were down and out. In came Brett Lee, who we all know as the fastest bowler in the world. He started slow as he tried to get himself in, and with five overs left, there were just 103 runs on the board.

Darren Ganga gave the ball to Simmons with the hope that he would continue the fabulous job that he had done earlier in the game, but Brett Lee had other plans. He hit him for a six over square leg, and followed it up with another one over long-on. Then, as if to rub salt on Simmons’s wounds, he stepped back and smashed a four through cover. Brett Lee continued what he had started even after SPD Smith departed, and went on to score 48 runs off 31 balls, studded with five sixes! More importantly he helped NSW get to a respectable and a defendable score of 159-9; anything less wouldn’t have been enough to stop the in-form T&T.

But Brett Lee wasn’t done for the match. He came back to torment the T&T batsmen with his bowling. He bowled William Perkins with a full, fast, and straight delivery, which uprooted two out of his three stumps. Then he took a sharp return catch to dismiss Lendl Simmons off the second ball of his second over, to reduce T&T to 21-3. T&T were eventually all out for 118 giving the victory and 2.6 million USD to NSW.

What Brett Lee did in the match was simply great. But he didn’t become great on Friday. He has been great for a long, long time. I saw an interview of his about five years back in which he said, “As a kid, I had two dreams: I wanted to be the fastest bowler in the world, and I wanted to play for Australia.” Brett Lee is great because he followed up his dreams with a lot of hard work, and actually became the faster bowler in the world and also earned the baggy green. But as far as I am concerned, he is great because even as a kid he had the wisdom to know that just becoming the fastest bowler in the world won’t automatically earn him the a place in the Australian team; the main job of a bowler is to get wickets and whether you do it by bowling at 150kmph or 100kmph is irrelevant. That is why he said, “I wanted to be the fastest bowler in the world and I wanted to play for Australia”. Those two are different thing altogether, and the first may or may not lead to the second. He knew that even as a kid and that’s why he is great.

So that is why his performance on Friday doesn’t really surprise me. Great players are supposed to rise to the occasion in important matches when there is a lot at stake, and Brett Lee did just that. He has done that many times before. I still remember that do-or-die second match in the best-of-three-match final against Australia in 2004. Australia had already won the first match. Then in the second match, they posted a mammoth 359-5. India started their chase in great fashion with Sehwag flicking Jason Gillespie over fine leg for a six off the very first ball. Brett Lee was placed at short fine leg, and the next time Sehwag tried to do the same, he plucked the ball out of thin air. It was a stunning catch to say the least. Then he combined with Gillespie again to dismiss Tendulkar. And as if that wasn’t enough, he later dismissed the in-form VVS Laxman, caught and bowled off his own bowling. And Laxman’s dismissal was nothing short of bizarre. Trying to fend off a Brett Lee Yorker, Laxman dug his bat in time, but the ball popped straight back to Lee who caught it and appealed vociferously. Umpire Rudi Koertzen was puzzled but nevertheless referred it to the third umpire. And sure enough, the replays showed that ball had hit the ground first, then hit Laxman’s bat, and then flew into Brett Lee’s hands. One has to compliment Brett Lee’s vision and presence of mind for that appeal because he saw what nobody else saw. Laxman had tormented the Aussies throughout that entire summer with his artistry, and his dismissal proved to be the last nail in India’s coffin. The Indians were dismissed for 155 which gave the Aussies the victory with a mind-boggling 208 run margin, and also the trophy.

But the one incident that is etched in my memory is a different one. I don’t quite remember which match it was, but one of Australia’s better fielders dropped a simple catch off Brett Lee’s bowling at a crucial juncture. That fielder would have taken that catch 99 times out of 100 even if you had pulled him out of his bed at midnight, half-asleep, and maybe even drunk. That’s what made it so disappointing. But Brett Lee walked back to his bowling mark, ran in, and bowled the perfect yorker which uprooted two of the three stumps. That to me is a sign of true greatness. Brett Lee could have done what 99.999999% of the six billion people who inhabit this planet would have done at that moment: get angry, lose his cool, bang in the ball short or bowl wide or something like that, get hit by the batsmen, and give it all away. But instead, he chose to forget all about the dropped catch, maintain his composure, and bowl the next delivery to the best of his ability. Easy to say. Extremely hard to do. But he did it, and that’s why I have rechristened him “Great Lee”.

Was Brett Lee born great or did he become great? That is a question that we will never be able to answer. But full credit to the entire Australian cricketing system, from the school and club cricket level all the way up to the national level for spotting Brett Lee’s talent, grooming him, giving him the international stage, and giving him enough opportunities for his skills to develop and for him to bloom into a “great cricketer”. And they haven’t done this just with Brett Lee. Many others “gritty cricketers” and “match winners” have been given their due chance. That is why you see the Australian cricket team dig themselves out of a hole time and again, and win matches that they should have lost. And that is why I salute the entire Australian cricketing system with the greatest admiration and respect.

Coming back to Brett Lee, I will say that what sets him apart from most other cricketers is not his bowling speed, but his attitude and his approach to the game. So I will conclude by saying, “Go Brett Lee! Give us many more performances like the one in the Champions League T20 final. It’s a pleasure to watch. And even if things don’t go your way in the future, which isn’t very likely to happen, one person will always be your fan!”