Paul Lewis: Lee's a lot to be desired

Beamers or 'bean' balls have always caused controversy in cricket. The fast, full toss aimed at the head or upper body carries with it an emotive impact not found even in short-pitched bowling - even when New Zealand's Ewen Chatfield was memorably sconed by Peter Lever in the move which led to protective helmets being worn.

The reason for the emotion is that within the nanoseconds a batsman gets to decide how to play a ball from the likes of Brett Lee, the batsman is expecting a ball to hit the pitch first. A fast full toss aimed high can cause the batman to lose his radar and become a sitting duck. Anyone who has ever faced a really fast bowler will know the vulnerability of a batsman to such a change in trajectory.

It's also illegal - anything above the waist is supposed to be no-balled and two beamers can, and do, lead to the bowler being removed from the bowling crease.

The latest example, before Lee's to a demonstrably unimpressed Brendon McCullum last weekend, was when Pakistan's Abdul Razzaq bowled two of them to, you guessed it, Brett Lee last month in the tri-series in Australia.

In Pakistan's innings, Lee returned the compliment when Razzaq was batting. Both bowlers apologised and said the ball had slipped from their grasp. Lee issued a similar apology re McCullum.

That led to New Zealand coach, John Bracewell, making the wonderfully barbed comment that Lee was making a lot of apologies these days for a bowler in such good form. Cricket commentator Peter Roebuck called for Lee to be sent home and former Australian fast bowler Rodney Hogg said Lee's beamers were deliberate and that he had used them previously in his career - although his credibility thinned a bit when he said he hadn't actually seen the Lee delivery to McCullum.

Meanwhile Australia captain Ricky Ponting said Lee was too nice a guy to stoop to such things and the beamer was accidental.

The point is that fast bowlers, by nature, are pugnacious creatures, no matter how benign their behaviour off the field. They have a tendency to get all snotty when things go wrong and the temptation to rip one at an unsuspecting batsman sometimes wins them over.

So the law probably doesn't go far enough.

Why not make one beamer the trigger for the removal of a bowler? Allowing two still allows a fast bowler the ability to bowl one and cloud the issue by apologising. In other sports - rugby, for instance - anyone raking a player's head with their studs is automatically sent off (if they are seen by officialdom). Whether it's deliberate or not is irrelevant. It's dangerous. If bowlers at international level cannot control their 150km/hr deliveries, then let them pay the price. This will at least prevent the deliberate - particularly in limited overs cricket where the loss of a key bowler from the firing line could prove decisive.

In 2001, Pakistan's Waqar Younis was stood down by the umpire after bowling two at rampant Australian batsman Andrew Symonds. Pakistan's Mohammad Akram was hauled out of the bowling line-up when he bowled two at a Lancashire tail-ender while playing for Sussex last year. You may be building up a bit of a picture about Pakistani fast bowlers here.

Lee, when asked about Razzaq's beamer said: "He's the type of guy who never means to bowl beamers. It was quite slippery out there. He's not the type of fella to do that, we had a good chat after the game and that's the end of it. He didn't mean it, so no harm done."

That tends to reinforce the impression that Lee is what his team-mates say - a genuinely good guy. But it does beg the question - how was it that Lee's only accidental beamer of the match happened to be directed against good old Abdul?