A few thoughts on intimidation and express bowling

Brett Lee is getting quite a few mentions in despatches in the cricket world, which is not surprising. Truly fast bowlers get our attention.

Not all the attention is favourable, of course. The cricket community has long had mixed feelings about the genuine express merchants. Certainly, the thrill of sheer pace and the element of danger that the batsmen face in taking them on is part of the attraction of the game. But the resulting adrenaline, conflict, and the injuries that speed merchants inflict on batsmen conflict with cricket’s ‘gentleman’s game’ heritage.

Since Jeff Thomson burst onto the cricketing world in 1974, there has been a steady stream of truly fast and dangerous bowlers. What is their role in a game that needs and wants the excitement that they provide, given the questions that they pose to the sport’s commitment to being a ‘gentleman’s game’?

I must confess to being an unabashed fan of the role of the speed merchant in cricket. There is no conflict in my mind between being an honourable and respected sportsman and also using pace as a weapon to inflict fear, uncertainty and doubt in the mind of the batsman. I do not see anything unethical about intimidation as a tactic. Cricket at the highest level should be a test of all the batsman’s skills, including his character and his ability to overcome his fear.

However, the game’s rulers, in theory, disagree with me, and the Laws of the Game are quite clear. Law 42, section 6 deals with intimidation and while it is only honoured in the breach at first-class and international level, there is no doubt that the letter of the law is against me.

Beamers are another matter entirely, and that is where Brett Lee is drawing some controversy. He has an undoubted history of bowling them, and he claims that they are unintentional, merely misguided yorkers. From my own observation of him in action, I would say that is MOSTLY true.

There was one time however, when he bowled beamers that seemed pretty deliberate to me. That was in a limited overs match against Pakistan in Sydney in early 2005, when Abdul Razzaq copped a couple. However, given that Razzaq had been either silly or reckless enough to let a couple of beamers of his own at Brett Lee. Now that sort of tit-for-tat retaliation seems unworthy to me. Razzaq is a good enough batsman to deal with it, but basically, Lee was in the wrong there.

How should cricket deal with this sort of behaviour? Umpires have the power to order a repeat offender out of the attack, and this has happened. Waqar Younis had it happen to him in the first match of the 2003 World Cup against Australia, and this seems like the right balance to me. However, the problem is that umpires, in general, lack the confidence to do this often enough. So to me, the solution to an excess of beamers in cricket is to bolster the confidence of the umpire’s fraternity.