As with World Series Cricket 23 years ago, the biggest surprise about the Indian Premier League is what high-quality, super-competitive cricket is being played. Three years in, the IPL is anything but an exhibition.

Unfortunately for the bowlers, the structure of T20 cricket reduces them to the status of the guys who press the button to release clay pigeons. T20 on India pitches is all about the batsmen - the shooters - and whether they can connect with enough targets. For bowlers, the aim is not to inflict pain on others but to avoid it for themselves.

With this in mind, it's been poignant to see a couple of Australia's greatest bowling servants take their punishment. In the first year of IPL, Glenn McGrath came out of retirement to be arguably the best fast bowler in the tournament. In the second year, some genius at the Delhi Daredevils decided McGrath was too old. By the third year, he took the hint and retired, again.

Shane Warne's achievement in leading Rajasthan to the first IPL premiership showed what a winning captain he might have been for Australia if he hadn't riddled his feet with bullets. Predictably unpredictable, enterprising and crafty, he managed to inject a low-budget team with his own magical self-belief. Of course, they won the final in high drama. Aside from supporting St Kilda, Warne has always been a lucky sportsman.

Moreover, his bowling in that first year was the equal of McGrath's for guile and deception and trickery. The old bowler's last remaining tools are all that's left in the IPL, where swing is non-existent and pace turns snicks into sixes. But as Rajasthan have lost their gloss in IPLs II and III, Warne's bowling has increasingly resembled the standard fodder-provision. His output this season was respectable enough: in 14 matches, he took a wicket every 27 balls and conceded 7.62 runs an over. This compares reasonably with Harbhajan Singh's 6.65 for Mumbai, Anil Kumble's 6.46 for Bangalore and Muttiah Muralidharan's 7.40 for Chennai. The premier spinners' strike rates were all between 18 and 27.

But figures aside, call me sentimental but there's something undignified in Shane Warne watching yet another top-edged hoick from AB Dinda or LR Shukla sailing into the dancing crowd. It's nobody's business but Warne's when he decides enough is enough, and nothing can tarnish his record for Australia, but well, AB Dinda and LR Shukla don't deserve to be able to tell their grandchildren that they smashed the great Shane Warne all over India.

At his prime, Warne often got hit, but inevitably it was only the first act in a two-act drama of the batsman's downfall. Nowadays, watching him in the IPL, he looks hot and frustrated and, well, either he's eaten India out of grilling cheese or he's reversed his old stand against curries. Clearly a man who stars in hair-loss advertisements dealing cards with Michael Vaughan does not place an especially high price on his dignity, but jeepers, it wasn't right that a lot of nobodies got to say they knocked out Larry Holmes and George Foreman, and it's not right that whirring-eyed novices get to say they took the great Shane Warne for 20 in an over.

As for the third Australian warhorse in the IPL, Brett Lee's case is altogether different. He only played four games for Punjab this year, conceded more than 10 an over, and rushed home, wicketless, for attention to his elbow. Puzzlingly, amid all this he was given another Cricket Australia contract.

Does CA really share his irrepressible belief that he still has a couple of good limited-overs seasons in him, or are they recognising long and faithful service? No, it can't be the latter - Australia's selectors have never been softies - so it must be that Lee remains a part of their medium-term plans. Given the number of fast bowlers who have succeeded, more or less, for Australia in the 18 months since his last Test, it is almost disturbing that Lee is still perceived as part of the solution to his own absence.

At 33, with 76 Tests and 310 wickets behind him, Lee can never be said to have undercapitalised on his talent. To the contrary, if anything. So perhaps, like Warne, it's time to accept the inevitable and let younger men feed the balls into the bowling machines.