Lee bows out with BBL final defeat
ByPA Sport
Published 28/01/2015 at 14:03 GMT
Brett Lee bowed out of professional cricket on the losing side but with star-status firmly in tact as Perth Scorchers retained their Big Bash League title in a thrilling finish against Sydney Sixers.
Brett Lee finished on the losing side in the Big Bash League final
Image credit: PA Sport
Australia great Lee, playing his last match before retirement, rattled the stumps with the fourth and fifth balls of the final over and faced the prospect of bowing out with an unforgettable hat-trick.
Yasir Arafat dug out the delivery but would still have been run out, forcing a super over, had Sixers captain Moises Henriques not fluffed his collection at the bowler's end.
As Scorchers players, including non-striker and England outcast Michael Carberry, celebrated joyously, Lee fell to his knees beside the stumps, crestfallen.
For a moment, memories flooded back to the 2005 Ashes where a beaten but brilliant Lee was consoled by Andrew Flintoff at Edgbaston.
The scrambled single left Scorchers with a four-wicket win, having chased down their opponents' 147 for five.
Lee told One Live: "That's cricket isn't it.
"My hands are still shaking from that last ball. I was just trying to blast those pegs one last time and I thought I had it on the money.
"We played really well tonight but there had to be a loser and it had to be us."
When Lee started his final over Perth needed eight to win, with Carberry playing an audacious ramp shot for four off the first ball.
When the former England international dashed two off the next, it seemed as if Lee would go down without a fight but he had two rockets left and used them to castle Nathan Coulter-Nile and Sam Whiteman.
Shaun Marsh had done most of the heavy lifting for Scorchers, hitting 73 in 59 balls at the head of the innings.
And long before Henriques made the key fumble, he dragged his side back from a slow start with a gutsy 77 in 57 deliveries.
English cricket's remaining representatives in the match, Nottinghamshire duo Michael Lumb and Riki Wessels, made just five between them to kick off the Sixers innings.
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