Farewell Brett
Brett Lee has been a thoroughly modern fast bowler
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Brett Lee has been a thoroughly modern fast bowler. He has never played a Test in Pakistan. He has his own website. I presume he tweets. And he has chosen to retire from Test cricket in the hope that he may be able to prolong his one-day career, writes Vic Marks in the Observer.
In a bar in Melbourne in December 1998 an old Australian Test cricketer was barely able to contain his excitement. Rodney Marsh, director of the Australian academy at the time (he would go on to do the same job for the England and Wales Cricket Board) and a frequent contributor to the Observer's sports pages, was so excited he barely had time to sip his beer.
England had just gone one down in the Ashes series, but this was not the reason Marsh was jumping up and down like a kid with a new toy. The explanation came in his column of that week. "Just to cheer you up some more," he wrote. "I've just watched the academy side beat Victoria's second team – and I'm in a state of some exhilaration. Fast bowlers always excite me and I've just witnessed one in action. My boys asked me whether I had seen anyone quicker. 'Just one,' I said. 'Thommo.' The bowler in question is called Brett Lee. Remember that name."
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo