Even my heart skipped a beat,” says Brett Lee when you ask him about the mean beamer bowled to Sachin Tendulkar during the recently concluded one-day series in Australia; a nasty ball that practically made the collective heart of the nation skip a beat. “I said ‘look Sachin, I apologise. I didn’t mean that.’ I’m glad no one was hurt,” says Lee. May be it’s this humility that makes him arguably the most popular non-Indian cricketer in India, or maybe his oh-so-sweet shukriyas or achchas or even his popular music videos.

But behind the boyish charm lurks a silent ruthless killer. He makes batsmen quake in their grass-smudged studs when he launches a 122-gm lethal missile — a mere cricket ball in hands of lesser mortals — at them. Lee belongs to the tribe often considered as beasts of burden in the cricketing world -fast bowlers. Toiling tirelessly in unfavourable conditions on increasingly flattish pitches loaded in favour of batsmen; trying to get that crucial breakthrough for the team time and again. But Lee doesn’t fall in that category — he is a smooth operator, more akin to Carlos the Jackal than the Terminator.

The talent was always present but his success is a function of how he has managed himself. The corridors of cricket history are littered with pace bowlers who fizzled out or who (Shoaib Akhtar for instance) haven’t been able to do justice to their talent. A decade in the business and Lee is still improving. What does he do differently? “I just enjoy my cricket. I have been very lucky that I have been given a gift. And I have taken it as far as I can,” he says. “It has come from a lot of hard work, training and sacrifices.” He takes particular pride in his achievement of touching the 160-kph barrier, and why not? Speed is central to his cricket.

The statistics of 271 wickets in 65 matches at an average of 29.97 in tests, and 296 wickets in 168 ODIs at an average of 22.88, don’t come by just bowling fast, they need much more. If everything is going according to plan, Lee pretty much knows how the entire over will play out. “If I am bowling really well, I can actually picture what is going to happen. I am going to bowl four balls going to Gilchrist, the first might be a yorker and the last one may be an off-stump again,” he says. The yorkers, bouncers and the deceptively slower deliveries are all components of strategy. His mantra: keep it simple. A good structured plan prepared after plenty of research is central to Lee’s mission and that’s where analysts, coaches and team members chip in. Lee’s no slouch when it comes to analysis either: If Sachin Tendulkar is batting, here’s what he’ll do. “The first thing is to make sure you are not hit for a six or a four,” Lee laughs. “He likes to go for the big hundreds. If you are bowling, you have to be really patient because he waits for the bad ball to punish you and sometime a bowler can get impatient.”