With an infectious smile and that incredible ability to bowl at scorching speed, Brett Lee built an enduring legacy as a fast bowler in international cricket.
Now, 14 years after he quit international cricket, Lee, the fourth most prolific wicket-taker in Australian history with 718 wickets behind Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Mitchell Starc, wore the same smile as he stepped into the Khaleej Times office in Dubai on Tuesday.
Now that Lee doesn’t bowl those thunderbolts at anyone anymore — he is among five fast bowlers alongside Shoaib Akhtar, Shaun Tait, Jeff Thompson and Starc to have broken the 160 km/h barrier — it was safe for us to put him in a spot.
So we asked one of the fastest bowlers of all time the million-dollar question: can Virat Kohli and Joe Root break Sachin Tendulkar’s two incredible batting records?
The Indian maestro retired from the game in 2013 as the only player to have scored 100 international centuries (51 in Tests and 49 in ODIs).
Tendulkar also remains the highest scorer in Test cricket with 15,921 runs at 53.78 from 200 matches.
These extraordinary batting feats looked seemingly impossible to surpass for anyone who picked up a cricket bat.
But Kohli and Root now seem to be the genuine threats. The modern Indian icon has just registered his 86th hundred across formats in the first ODI against the West Indies on Sunday.
The 37-year-old, who announced that the 2027 ODI World Cup will be his last, has around 25 to 30 one-day internationals to try and break the record of his childhood idol.
Having retired from Tests and T20Is, Kohli now plays only ODIs, a format in which his staggering consistency — 15,080 runs from 315 matches at 59.13 — and match-winning heroics earned him a near-mythic status.
Root (14,278 runs in 169 Tests at 50.45), on the other hand, is only 1,643 runs behind Tendulkar on the list of highest scorers in Test cricket history.
At 35, the England captain has a golden opportunity to eclipse Tendulkar in the greatest format of the game.
When Lee, the first bowler to take a hat-trick in the T20 format, sat down for an interview with Khaleej Times, the first English newspaper in the UAE, he was bold when answering questions on Kohli and Root’s quest to topple Tendulkar from the summit.
The 49-year-old revealed why he would never write off Kohli’s chances of becoming only the second man to score 100 international centuries.
“If there’s one guy that I would pick, it would be him (Kohli), because you talk about hunger — the way that he looks after his body, the way that he looks after his longevity, the way he trains… That’s why he’s such a great athlete,” he said.
“So I would not put it past him to get 14 hundreds in 30 odd innings.”
Lee, a Dubai resident now who is also the brand ambassador for Play971, the UAE’s first licensed sports wagering and gaming platform, also puts Kohli among the greatest batters he has seen in his life.
“He is right at the top. And I think you don’t often get to say that you could mention Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar and someone else, but Kohli’s definitely up there,” he said.
“I’m not going to pick who should fit in what order. Let’s say you’ve got five guys sitting on a bus. And for me, it might be… You could have 10 guys on a bus, because I don’t want to leave anyone out.
“But you’d say that Lara, Tendulkar, (Ricky) Ponting, (Jacques) Kallis, Kohli, Root and (Steve) Smith — those guys are all sitting on the bus. What seat they’re sitting in is still to be determined.”
Lee also aligned with legendary Indian fast-bowling all-rounder Kapil Dev, who had, in 2019, tipped Root to score more Test runs than Kohli, Smith and Kane Williamson, the other three members of the ‘Fab Four’.
It was a bold prediction at that time as Smith, Kohli and Williamson were in outstanding form in the five-day format, with Root struggling to convert his starts into big knocks.
But the England batter regained his mojo after the Covid-19 pandemic, scoring 24 of his 41 Test hundreds since May 2020.
It’s that rich vein of form which, according to Lee, can take Root to the greatest heights of Test batting.
“Definitely. I think he can get there. And Kapil Dev, I think, was right on the money. Someone who has taken 434 Test wickets, as Kapil Dev has, I’m not going to argue against him because he’s a superstar and a legend,” the Australian said.
“But you know, you see Joe Root and, once again, the hunger that he’s got in his eyes. The technique, the flawless cover drives, the way he works the ball. But also, too, he doesn’t give his wicket away.
“He’s not flamboyant. He doesn’t have to be flamboyant. And different players have different techniques. Chris Gayle got them in a clip. Lara would hit the ball all over the ground, whereas I think Tendulkar and Joe Root are more technically sound.
“So yeah, I think he could definitely get there.”
Back in the day, the cricketing world watched in awe as Lee terrorised batters with hostile pace. Now, he cannot stop admiring two modern greats who are chasing Tendulkar, arguably the second-greatest batsman of all time after Don Bradman, Lee’s iconic compatriot.
Source: Khaleej Times
