MELBOURNE, Jan 18: Fast bowler Brett Lee believes Australian cricketers don’t make frivolous appeals, but joined colleague Glenn McGrath on Wednesday in conceding they had to be more careful with the way they treated umpires.

Both bowlers have fallen foul of officialdom this summer, Lee for dissent and McGrath for obscene language, during the third Test against South Africa in Sydney earlier this month.

And wicket-keeper/batsman Adam Gilchrist is also in trouble after being reported for dissent when he questioned an umpire’s decision during a one-day match against the Proteas last Sunday.

Although Lee maintained the Australians only appealed when they believed an opponent to be out, he agreed that both he and his teammates had to respect umpires’ decisions.

“There’s a line you can’t step over and we’ve got to make sure that we don’t do that,” he said.

“We’ve got to get to know the umpires a lot better and realise too that the umpires have only got 0.3 of a second to make up their minds, so it’s a very tough job.

“We’ve got the aids here, cricketers and journalists, and people watching on TV at home that we’ve got the super slo-mo replays and we can say: ‘That’s definitely going to hit leg stump’ or ‘He’s definitely nicked that’, whereas a bowler or an umpire and maybe a batsman, in the heat of the moment, have only got a split-second to work out what’s going on.

“Sometimes you want to know that was possibly not out or why you’ve been given out and you’ve just got to learn to deal with it, accept the decision and get on with it.”

Lee’s admission comes a day after McGrath conceded Australians needed to “pull our heads in” on the field, although he maintained umpires also had to be approachable.

During what has been a heated summer of cricket between Australia and South Africa, Proteas coach Mickey Arthur has claimed that the Aussies were the best side in the world at excessive and aggressive appealing.

Lee, who is also making a name for himself as a useful lower-order batsman, made a career-best 57 against the South Africans on Sunday.

He said he enjoyed the extra responsibility afforded him with the bat in the past year, being used as a Test night-watchman and as a big-hitter on one-day games. He averages about 20 with the bat in both Tests and one-dayers.

“I’d like to be considered as a handy tail-end batsman and whether that develops into a bowling all-rounder, then that’s great, that’s what I’m aiming at,” he said ahead of Friday’s tri-series clash against the South Africans in Melbourne.—AFP