Less than 24 hours before he took ball in hand to tackle New Zealand's batsmen in Wellington this week, Brett Lee was strolling through the windy city's main shopping mall on the hunt for Christmas gifts for friends and family.
Clutching a take-away cafe latte roughly the size of a small wheat silo, Lee was approached by a group of giggling teenage girls, with whom he politely agreed to be photographed before wishing them well for the day and continuing his stroll.
A day later as he paused at the top of his bowling mark, the largely pubescent crowd at the New Zealand capital's Westpac Stadium started up a cacophonous chant of "Lee is a wanker".
The barrage re-appeared throughout the night and was only interrupted for a sustained bout of booing when Lee unleashed a potentially dangerous chest-high full-toss at NZ batsman Brendon McCullum in the 99th of 100 overs.
It is the 29-year-old's propensity for committing cricket's most unforgiveable sin that has one of the sport's most genuinely likeable and gentle souls cast as the devil incarnate among rival fans.
The one thing all sides of the "beamer" debate appear to agree on is that Lee does not intentionally target batsmen with hand-to-head balls. If the opposite was true, it would be unwise to let him loose in commercial precincts let alone on cricket pitches.
So why is it that among the admittedly shallow pool of cricket's express bowlers, Lee is the only one who repeatedly lets slip the occasional "beamer" to incense opposition batsmen and crowds alike?
The first clue lies in Lee's action.
Unlike great fast bowlers of past and present such as Glenn McGrath, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, Lee is not a toweringly tall man able to thump the ball into the pitch from height.
Nor does he indulge in the trademark bowling crease leap that allowed regulation six-footers such as Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan and Kapil Dev to deliver the ball from a greater height than their stature should have allowed.
Lee has a low, almost sliding action which means when he is trying to spear in those feet-bruising yorkers, he cannot rely on spearing the ball at an opposing batsman.
Instead, in order to push it through at ankle height over 22 yards, he relies on releasing it earlier in his action. Get that split-second point of release slightly wrong and the result can be a missile aimed at the torso rather than the toe.
A dew-laden ball and greasy footholds, as was the case on Wednesday evening, further complicated the issue and the fact that the four recent instances of Lee "beamers" have occurred when bowling in the evening may be instructive.
Then there is the common thread of the nature of competition. All five of the waist-high (or above) full tosses he has delivered over the past 12 months have come in the one-day arena.
During that period, Lee has bowled 323 overs in Test cricket and not once let slip a head-hunter. That must be explainable by the fact his role as a yorker specialist in the limited-overs arena means significantly increased opportunity for error.
The other advantage Lee's fast bowling peers around the world boast is control. Of all the frontline quicks playing Test cricket, none has been less economical over the past year than Lee. He also conceded more runs in one-dayers than any other.
Put bluntly, that suggests Lee does not have the ability to control the ball as well as others. Not that any of this is comfort to batsmen on the receiving end, particularly NZ's Brendon McCullum, who has been on the end of the past three.
Perhaps it was the wee Kiwi for whom Lee was scouring Wellington to find an appropriate conciliatory gift last week.
- ANDREW RAMSEY