Which bowler is always more dangerous between 'Shoaib Akhtar and Brett Lee' ? (REPOST)

Shoaib Akhtar and Bret Lee are two popular names of the world of cricket. They are believed to be soul takers bowlers who made the batsman simply hold his breath while facing them for bowling in the ground. They both understood that bowling is the real offense of cricket’s planet and a strong bowling is a true strength of any team playing cricket.

Basically it’s very difficult to answer your question if you don’t faced them both. Ha-ha. Jokes apart. Lets see some stats:

This is Shoib Akhtar’s career record.

And this is Bret Lee’s career record.

Shoaib Akhtar-famous as Rawalpindi Express is the real fastest bowler in the history of International cricket. This Pakistani cricketer made his test debut in November 1997 and played his first International ODIs in March 1998. Shoaib became most recognized for his attacking fast bowling. There are so many matches where this former fast bowler played an extremely important role for winning the competition. Shoaib has numerous fast bowling records on his credit.161.3kph, 160kph 3x, 159kph and 158.4kph were recoded as some of his fast bowling speed. The one of the important factor of Shoaib Akhtar vs Brett Lee is that Shoaib Akhtar was the original bowler in the history of cricket who bowled over 100 mph.

On the other hand, Brett Lee is an Australian cricketer who is regarded as one of the fastest bowlers of the world. He made his debut for Australia in a test match against India in 1999. He took 310 wickets from 76 tests, joining the best 300 Test wicket club prior to retiring from Test cricket before time in 2010 to focus on the shorter forms of the sport. His bowling performance in the world cup of 2003 was truly remarkable which took his team to the heights of success and fame. Lee is well known for his pace and fast bowling which remains regularly up to 150 km per hours.

In the beginning, Bret Lee was suspected of illegal bowling action but later he was cleared by the ICC authorities. Similarly Shoaib Akhtar was also criticized for his faulty bowling. Both the bowlers were criticized for their bowling actions but had been cleared subsequently.

In late 90s and in early 2000s time, Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar both were in competition that who could bowl faster, who would be more furious. The last smile was for Shoaib Akhtar , who has the record of bowling fastest ball (161.3 kph). But both were furious and super fast and great bowlers. Brett Lee had played more matches, so he has more wickets than Akhtar. But, if you see the Test Averages of Akhtar you can understand Akhtar was clearly more furious than Lee. Akhtar is a Pakistani, played most of the matches in the sub-continent dead pitches, still he has two 10 wicket-hawls whether Bret Lee has not any 10 wicket-hawl in Test Cricket.

Even many of the batsmen including Ricky Ponting confessed that Shoaib Akhtar was most furious bowler he faced. Many tail-ender batsman like Muralidharan or Asish Nehra were scared to face Akhter because of his furious bouncers (They had the scare that Akhtar could damage their bowling finger :D).

So, conclusion is: Shoaib Akhtar is more furious than Brett Lee indeed.


[Reposted from my Quara wall. Link - https://www.quora.com/Which-bowlers-bouncers-are-always-more-dangerous-between-Shoaib-Akhtar-and-Brett-Lee/answer/Souritra-Banerjee-1]