If you have faced him from under the helmet, you would find it really hard to believe Brett Lee could play Mozart. Sit across the lunch table with him and the unbelievable seems likely. ‘Too well behaved to be a fast bowler’; ’the odd-one out’, he does not mind such comments, as long as they pertain to his behaviour on the field.
“I just laugh back if somebody sledges and tries to get me into a confrontation. And I’d love it if you write this in your article, mate,” says Lee, who was here to launch Timex watches’ new calendar collection.
It is not a fast bowlers’ trait to just smile at a batter when he plays and misses. How does he abstain from confrontations? “I have a lovely family, and am very happy with my life. Cricket is just a game for me. Only on the field, is it damn serious,” says Lee.
Out of the Aussie Test side for the last 15 months, Lee says he loved playing under Steve Waugh, who was a very aggressive captain and used to make things happen.
Asked to compare Waugh with Ricky Ponting, he says, “They are two different captains and it’s very hard to compare one with the other.”
Whom would he rather play under? “Let me first play a Test match under Ricky,” he says and laughs. Incredibly, Lee has not played a single Test match under Ponting, while he has played 70 of his 104 one-dayers after Waugh was dropped in 2002. Ponting has been showing faith in Michael Kasprowicz over him.