June 12  
Cricket world's two fastest bowlers do battle 

MELBOURNE: Both camps wish to play down the fact but there is no doubting that the one-day series between Australia and Pakistan will boil down to a duel between the two most exciting bowlers in world cricket. Whether or not any records are broken when Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar come on is another matter.

Two of the three matches will be played at Melbourne's indoor stadium. And bowling indoors will, in theory, make it harder to pass the magic 100mph barrier, because there is no wind to assist the pacemen. Professor Peter Bearman, of Imperial College, London, says: "Bowling indoors, things should be more predictable through the air simply because you shouldn't have any wind factor. 

"But when you're bowling outdoors, the wind would clearly be of assistance if it's behind you." But that's largely by the by. The fact is this series will be one of the most important indicators of form between now and the World Cup. 

Let's look at Lee and Akhtar first and foremost, the obvious crowd-pullers. Akhtar was so fast in the 3-0 home drubbing of New Zealand recently that a speed gun recorded him bowling a ball in Lahore at 161 kph - some 100.05 mph. 

Dr Rabi Mehta, a research fellow in the experimental fluid mechanics laboratory at the California's NASA Ames Research Center, says high temperatures assist high bowlers. 

"If the temperature goes up density is reduced and balls travel faster. In the same way a batsman can hit sixes more easily." That explains why Akhtar was able to bowl so fast in Lahore in late April - one of the hottest times of year in the sub-continent. 

But presumably in an Australian winter, it will be tougher to generate genuine pace. When Akhtar gets it right in one-dayers, he can be awesome. He took six for 16 in the first match in the series against the Kiwis, but none for 74 combined in the following two games. 

With 105 wickets in 62 matches at 20.34 it's good enough to put him ninth in the PriceWaterhouseCooper one-day ratings. That's five places ahead of Lee, who has 67 wickets in 38 matches at 24.74. Akhtar's economy rate at 4.51 is also better than Lee's, who is on the expensive side at 4.95. 

The series is the second for Australian captain Ricky Ponting, who had instant success when winning in South Africa. His predecessor, Steve Waugh, had suffered the ignominy of failing to make the VB Series final on home soil, in which South Africa beat Australia. 

For Pakistan, their up-and-coming opener Imran Nazir gets his first serious examination, while Australian all-rounder Shave Watson can stake a strong claim towards the World Cup. 

The first two games of the three-match series will be played indoors on a drop-in pitch at the Colonial Stadium in Melbourne on 12 and 15 June. 

The third game is in Brisbane on 19 June.