Brett Lee: The fun boy wants his Test place back - fast

Australia's exciting, excitable patriot lives life to the full. But he won't be satisfied with just a one-day role. Stephen Brenkley talks to him

Australia's tour began perfectly. The first ball of the first match was fast and straight. It swung away just enough, bounced more than any batsman would have liked, took the outside edge and ended securely in the hands of second slip.

Australia's tour began perfectly. The first ball of the first match was fast and straight. It swung away just enough, bounced more than any batsman would have liked, took the outside edge and ended securely in the hands of second slip.

Brett Lee, the bowler, greeted this with paroxysms of joy. He raced up the pitch, high-fiving and attempting to break long- and high-jump records all at once. The instinctive reaction of watching Englishmen, of whom there were about 7,000, was along the lines of: "Oh, shucks".

The only consolation was that this lethal delivery was bowled in a Twenty20 exhibition match at the New Zealander Stephen Fleming, so that at least none of England's finest had been undermined. These were gentle circumstances. This was the lovely ground at Arundel, and a match, between the tourists and a Professional Cricketers' Association XI, nothing more than a warm-up for the serious business of the triangular NatWest Series which begins on Thursday. But it seemed to be filled with foreboding. And what's more, everybody recognised it.

Lee, bless the huge showman in him, needed scant encouragement to play it up the next morning. Fleming, a pal of his, has become his one-day rabbit, four times being dismissed in Lee's opening salvo in the past seven matches between Australia and New Zealand.

"When he came out to bat I wondered if I could get him out in the first over again. It just worked out. To let go of your first ball and see a wicket, it's a great start. It can definitely set the whole tour up." Oh, shucks.

Lee is the fastest bowler on the planet - quicker consistently than Shoaib Akhtar - and although there is still a considerable body of informed opinion which speaks on behalf of his countryman Jeff Thomson, he may be the fastest there has ever been. He is the most potent of bowlers in one-day cricket, where he takes his high-velocity wickets at a rate of one every 29 balls.

It beggars belief that he has been omitted from the side in each of Australia's past 17 Test matches. Lee goes beyond merely being a fast bowler. He lives the part, a performer way beyond the relatively straightforward act of delivering the ball (indeed, he has a rock band, Six and Out). If Phineas Barnum were around now he might have snatched Lee away from the clutches of cricket and had him in the circus.

Lee makes the whole affair an act of high drama. He does not actually paw the ground as if he was some kind of noble savage going in for the kill, but it feels as if he does. In the rapid intensity of the one-day arena, the sense is that he is always about to make something happen. Lee greets every wicket with outrageous delight. There are several reasons for his high-octane involvement.

"If you ask my friends and family they will tell you how competitive I am," he says. "I accept that there are times when you don't come out on top, but if I'm having a game of pool or go-kart racing, it could be anything, I've got to win. It's the competitive nature, it's what keeps me going.

"A lot of people say how I'm very animated, and my simple reply is that if anybody has taken a wicket for Australia they will know how I feel. The person sitting watching at home on television might say, 'Jeez, he carried on a bit', but they're lucky I only do what I do and nothing else, like leap the grandstand or do a lap round the ground. That's tongue in cheek, but it's an amazing feeling. I really do enjoy that situation when you can win the match."

Lee has won plenty of matches with decisively rapid interventions. None was as spectacular as his destruction of England in Australia two years ago. He had undermined them in the first final of the one-day VB Series, but England had somehow dragged themselves back into the game in the second final at Melbourne and looked dead certs to take it to a third and deciding match in Adelaide. The tourists needed 14 runs from 18 balls with four wickets left.

"Ricky Ponting, our captain, came up and threw me the ball. He just said, 'Good luck', and I said, 'Look, we're not going to Adelaide', and he looked at me and his eyes told me he knew this guy is on a mission." Lee bowled like the wind, took three wickets in seven balls and nobody was going to Adelaide. Two months later, he was a superstar of the World Cup, taking 22 wickets, cutting a swathe through top orders. Australia won at a canter, if that is possible with their strike bowler propelling the ball at 95mph.

Now, there is another point behind his limited-overs form. He is using it to try to regain his place in Australia's Test side. There is no doubt that his Test form had slipped since his initial breakthrough - he let the team management know at one point that he was at his best simply being a fast bowler - but no other country could or would leave out a player who constantly bowls at such speed. His place has gone to Michael Kasprowicz.

"I love playing one-day cricket, there's so much fun in it," he says, "but every opportunity I get to play for Australia in one-day cricket I see not so much as a dress rehearsal as an audition, to increase my chances of playing in Test matches. I had a period three months ago feeling a bit down, but I've moved on. People must think Kasper and I hate each other because we're after the same spot, but we're really close friends. We want each other to do really well, and that's all part of being in the team."

Like all the other players in this Australian team, Lee is unafraid, nay he is proud, of wearing his patriotism on his sleeve. Ask not what Australia can do for them but what they can do for Australia. He began playing at around seven or eight back home in New South Wales with his brother Shane, himself an accomplished cricketer who played 47 one-day internationals for Australia. Shane batted, Brett bowled and the youngest brother, Grant, fielded in their paved backyard which "was like the Waca". If they needed a new tennis ball it was Brett who got on his bike and spent his pocket money to buy it, because Shane, being the elder, knew how much his kid brother wanted to play.

He was always the quickest kid in the team, but the ascent has been rocky. There have been injuries to arm, ankle and back. He has been accused of throwing, last winter he was embroiled in controversy for bowling beamers. All these things may be connected to a hyperactive character. His right elbow was first broken when he was 17 and was misdiagnosed as sprung ligaments. After a year, X-rays revealed the truth, but by then it had repaired itself. Five years on, he had made the Australian team when in a one-day match at Perth another throw from the deep produced a repeat injury. This time, two pins were inserted in his elbow.

Lee supposes that the bent arm resulting might have led to the mutterings of chucking which have dogged him. They also hurt him more than he is prepared to enunciate clearly, but he gives it away occasionally. "I've never had a problem with my action as far as its legality goes. I took part in a phone link-up with bowling experts and they came back 10-0 in my favour," he says. "There's flexion and hyperextension but the wrist has a lot to do with it. People might have a right to question my action, but when they call me a chucker they're calling me a cheat, and I'm not a cheat."

Last week, the Australia-based English commentator Peter Roebuck, who is going out of his way to become controversial and is less of a judge for it, said Andrew Flintoff was a thrower. Lee sympathises: "I feel for him because I've had a hard time of it personally." Roebuck called for Lee to be sent home from New Zealand this spring after he bowled a beamer at Brendon McCullum, implying that it was deliberate. The wind was rather taken out of this sail when McCullum revealed he had already accepted Lee's apology.

The latest injury, which cost Lee his Test place, was to his left ankle. It required surgery in March 2004 and Lee was back after four months, but it took him 12 to feel fully comfortable. "The trouble is that when surgeons talk about coming back in four months it's not the guy down the street."

Lee is a fitness fanatic. When he was out of the Test team during last autumn's tour of India he and his chum Shane Watson would be up at 5.30am each day for a run or a swim, encouraging each other. It is easy to imagine Lee getting up the pipe of opponents, but he is lovely to watch. More than that, he is compulsive.

"As things have happened in the past five years, I've gotten quicker each year," he says. "The last one-day international I played in last March I bowled the fastest ball I ever bowled, and it was the fastest summer I've ever bowled. I'm not going to make any big calls and say I'm going to bowl at 160ks [100mph]. I'm going to go out there and enjoy it. But if it feels right, who knows what might happen?"

The first ball at Arundel suggested it might feel right. Who knows what might happen indeed.

Biography

Born: 8 November 1976 in Wollongong.

Test career:

37 matches for Australia. Debut v India at MCG in 1999. Has taken 139 wickets at average of 31.66 (best 5-47); scored 593 runs at 19.76 (h/s 62no); and held 9 catches.

One-day International career:

104 matches. Debut v Pakistan at the Gabba in 2000. Has taken 186 wickets at 22.17 (economy rate 4.68 an over, best 5-27); scored 472 runs at 16.85 (h/s 51no); and held 27 catches.

Also:

Nicknamed "Bing", he has bowled at 100mph. Took a hat-trick (v Kenya) in the 2003 World Cup. Plays in a band, Six And Out. Brother of Shane Lee, who played in 45 ODIs for Australia.