SYDNEY, July 15 (AFP) -

If Australian Brett Lee is a chucker, so are most other Test fast bowlers, a leading biomechanics expert said here Wednesday.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) is to review the 23-year-old tearaway bowler's action after he was reported for throwing by two Indian umpires during the Test series against New Zealand in March and April. The Australian Cricket Board will call on a biomechanics expert to try to prove Lee's innocence when his case is heard by the ICC's illegal deliveries panel.

Bruce Mason, manager of the biomechanics department at the Canberra-based Australian Institute of Sport, said all bowlers would be under suspicion if their actions were examined closely enough.

"In raising Brett Lee's defence a biomechanical analysis needs to be done," Mason said, adding the naked eye or even slow motion relays didn't clarify the situation. Mason said modern technology would show up many players. "I could pull out a whole raft of bowlers and show you that at some stage of some of their deliveries they have an illegal action - every bowler is going to do that to some degree.

"If you had good quality, high-speed film, you could disqualify a whole lot of fast bowlers." Asked if he had seen many bowlers he would describe as "perfect", Mason said: "Generally you see faults in everyone." Mason said most fast bowlers got into trouble when they tried to extract more effort than their normal delivery. In Lee's case, the two umpires - Arani Jayaprakash and Srinivas Venkataraghavan - specifically criticised Lee's "effort ball". Mason suggested a scientific model should be drawn up which allows all bowlers some freedom of movement, saying a ruling that allows no bending of the arm is unworkable.

While Lee was open to question, Mason believed allegations of chucking were based more on politics than science. "The situation with Brett Lee is more a political problem than a sport or biomechanics problem," Mason said. "I think the fact Brett Lee's been so successful in his career to date is why questions have been raised. "If you've got someone knocking over wickets because he's bowling with a lot of speed, he's a threat. "While people don't want to say things out loud, there's a subconscious thing there.

"I don't think the Indian umpires who raised it said: 'We're going to get him' but they may have asked themselves 'Why is he bowling so fast? He must be doing something different, something illegal'. "They're not really seeing a bent elbow, they're seeing an image in their brain that tells them something is wrong and they're interpreting it as a bent elbow."

But Mason said umpires "were no more skilled than anyone else" at making a judgment on an illegal delivery. "With high-speed camera it takes about four or five hours of looking at a bowler's action and evaluating it before we can decide he's throwing it." Meanwhile, there was unexpected support for Lee Wednesday from Pakistan cricket manager Brigadier Mohammed Nasir, who only recently was forced to defend the action of Pakistani quick Shoaib Akhtar, said the inquiry would not mean the end of Lee's international career. "In my personal opinion I found nothing wrong with him," Nasir told ABC radio here.

"This is one of those things where if the umpires have raised some doubts or suspicion I'm sure if, at all, some remediation measures are required, it will be done and Brett Lee will be there for a long, long time to come." And Australia's Cricketers' Association boss Tim May said the handling of the chucking allegations were totally unsatisfactory. May complained about the four-month delay in telling Australia of the reports, and called for an overhaul of the ICC's review process. He said the pressure on players from such allegations required they be dealt with as soon as possible.