Pace & pain: Brett Lee enters Australian Cricket Hall of Fame

It's the type of cricketing yarn that offers up an irresistible mix of '90s nostalgia and the sheer thrill of express fast bowling.

December 20, 1999. Brett Lee has not long turned 23. He is at the WACA Ground in Perth, playing his 16th first-class match – a Sheffield Shield fixture for NSW against WA.

Featuring in the contest are no fewer than 18 past, present and future internationals. And standing in the slips cordon are Steve and Mark Waugh, two men Lee is desperate to impress in his bid to win a Test debut. 

"I can remember it like yesterday," he tells cricket.com.au. "If there was any time to stand up and put your name up in lights, that was it. And I had one of those days where things just happened."

The contest has seesawed across the first three days. Lee has already put WA on notice, bowling rapidly in the first innings to claim four wickets, including Mike Hussey, Ryan Campbell, and Damien Martyn.

Partway through day four, NSW are bowled out for 409, leaving the hosts chasing 280 to win on the final afternoon.

Lee though, has other plans. He is thrown the new ball by skipper Steve Waugh – the man he hopes will also be his Test captain in six days' time in Melbourne – and heads to the top of his mark.

"The Fremantle Doctor had come in, it was over my right shoulder," he says. "The pitch itself was nice to land on, and it was a nice surface to bowl on – the WACA, obviously, was flying through, and that was my chance to bowl as quick as I could.

"It's still to this day probably the quickest I ever bowled. Unfortunately, there was no speed gun." 

Lee unleashes. He is too quick for Test No.3 Langer, who plays on for eight. Twice he sends bumpers over wicketkeeper Brad Haddin's head and away for four byes. He has another Test star, Adam Gilchrist, caught and bowled.

Legend has it that in the slips, Steve Waugh has already pencilled Lee into his XI for Boxing Day against India. Mark Waugh, a man never easily impressed, will comment to Gilchrist post-match that it is "the quickest bowling he has ever seen".

Soon after, Lee sends Brendon Julian packing, and then he hits Jo Angel on the edge of his arm guard, breaking his right arm. Angel is whisked away for medical care, and in his next over, Lee finishes the match, castling WA No.11 Sean Cary.

From 15.4 overs, he has 4-55, and WA have been bowled out for 164.

Interviewed afterward by local media, WA captain Gilchrist responds to questions around Lee potentially making his Test debut after Christmas.

"What was on display in this game, I would say he is ready to go," he said. "It is a prime time to introduce someone like that who has got something special."

And so begins the 13-year international career of the newest addition to the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame.

* * *

By then, the rumours had been doing the rounds for years. Extreme pace is like that; it is not easy to fly under the radar when you are pushing 150kph as a 19-year-old.

And Lee had always been a tearaway. He was addicted to the thrill that came with possessing such a rare skill since he signed on as a nine-year-old for the Under 10s Oak Flats Rats, in the NSW Illawarra region. In one story, which might have grown legs over the years, he took six wickets in his very first over – all bowled – to leave opposition parents consoling confused kids.

Even then, a Baggy Green and the number '160' – as in, kilometres per hour – offered themselves up on the horizon as tantalising goals that determined the trajectory of his life. 

"I knew from the age of nine that I wanted to bowl fast," he later said. "I got that enthusiasm and that really good vibe out of seeing the stumps either break or be knocked over."

Lee credits his mum, Helen, who was a sprinter, for the genetics that delivered his athletic prowess. Beach sprints were de rigueur through his early training years, building up vital muscles to cope with the unique demands of a fast-bowling career he was committed to well before he knew the pain it would entail.

Yet the injuries came, inevitably, and rarely did they abate. Lee spent 14 weeks in his late teens in a back brace, the victim of a damaging action that saw him fall away badly in his delivery stride, and was only remedied with the expertise of Dennis Lillee.

Once he got it right, he was a stirring sight.

"Brett Lee was a different beast," says Damien Fleming. "A generational player."

Lee worked tirelessly at his craft in order to maintain the rage through almost 20 years of professional cricket, but there were also elements that came naturally. It was a combination of those factors that produced one of the fastest bowlers in cricket history.

"For me, run-up was my most important asset," he says. "Then it was having a braced front leg. That's something you're either born with, or you're not, (and) that will allow you to get that speed through the crease. For me, that's something that came naturally – that part of my action took care of itself.

"And then you've got the front arm – the snap down of the left arm which created my pace; the quicker my left arm came down, the quicker my right arm would follow."

Lee made his first-class debut for an Australian Cricket Academy (ACA) side in New Zealand in April 1995. In a line-up that included three other future internationals, the 18-year-old was by more than 12 months the baby of the side. Four wickets (three bowleds and an lbw) spoke to his promise.

Across the next couple of years, in between back stress fractures, he was limited to playing for the ACA and for his Sydney grade team Mosman, though even then he turned heads. Matthew Hayden was among those to observe his express pace, noting also his "nice action and good rhythm".

Lee was freshly 21 when he was picked for his Shield debut, against WA at the SCG in November 1997. A month later, he was named in the Australia A side to take on the touring South Africans. It was his third first-class match, and he took match figures of 2-115 from 41 overs.

"Brett Lee did not take a wicket, but he took the eye," wrote Greg Baum for The Age after day one. "This is only his (third) first-class game, and his only credential for playing, say the selectors bluntly, it is that he is FAST.

"So he is. Two years of struggle with stress fractures do not seem to have robbed him of that quality. One delivery to (Hansie) Cronje had him half-ducking, half holding his gloves to his face as he might against Mike Tyson."

Watching Lee's progress more closely than perhaps anyone other than his old mate Lillee was ACA supremo Rod Marsh. At the beginning of the 1990s, Marsh famously called Ricky Ponting the best teenage batter he had ever seen. In Lee, who spent a couple of years at the Academy, he knew he had another prodigious talent.

In March 1999, during an Academy tour of Zimbabwe, even Marsh was startled by what he witnessed. At the Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo, the young tearaway blew away a Matabeleland Invitation XI with match figures of 9-39, then backed it up with 8-52 against the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy. It was utter carnage.

"He bowled as fast I have seen anyone (bowl) since Jeff Thomson," Marsh said. "We finished up leaving a few helmets over there because he broke so many, and that's the truth.

"He is very, very fast. He's good enough to play (international cricket) now and I think the Australian selectors are well aware of that fact."

* * *

The domestic diehards of Australian cricket will have observed Lee turning out not once, but twice against the touring Indians prior to his Boxing Day Test debut in 1999.

By then he had also already been selected as 12th man for Australia's third Test against Pakistan in Perth, where captain Waugh was ultimately outvoted on the final selection, and Lee missed out for Michael Kasprowicz.

"I was pretty keen to get out of his net yesterday – he's real quick," Waugh said at the time. "There's no doubt he'll play Test cricket. He's just got to wait for the right opportunity, and it won't be that far away."

A few days after the Perth Test, Lee was back in Sydney with New South Wales, collecting seven wickets against India, and as a report in The Sydney Morning Herald detailed, "electrifying the Sydney Cricket Ground to leave the tourists smoking and in disarray".

On December 7 he took the new ball for the Prime Minister's XI in a 50-over match in Canberra. Inside four overs, he removed three of India's top four, including VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar.

The wicket of Tendulkar was particularly notable, beginning as it did a storied rivalry; no bowler dismissed the Little Master as many times (14) through his 24-year international career.

By Christmas, Lee had picked up 31 wickets at 22.84 in six first-class matches for the summer. He was inconsistent, even erratic at times, but his weaponry – lethal yorker, accurate bouncer, outswing with the new ball and reverse swing with the old – allied with his blistering pace proved irresistible to selectors.

"He is quicker than Shoaib Akhtar," Steve Waugh said in the lead-up to the Boxing Day Test. "As a captain it's always great to have someone who is bowling real quick and making it hard for the opposition."

And so on December 26, Lee received his Baggy Green from former Test quick Ian Meckiff, becoming in the process just the third debutant in a new tradition to be formally presented his cap by a past player.

Looking back at the footage of his maiden five-for, what's notable is how little actually changed across his 322-match international career. Outside of the ginger hair that would soon turn peroxide-blond, it's all there: the rhythmic run-up, the beautiful front-on action, the consequential speed, the shattering of stumps, and the joyful celebrations.

Lee played Australia's next seven Test matches across the following 11 months, taking 42 wickets at 16.07, and striking every 32.6 deliveries. The last of those matches came to a rapid close when the young quick took three wickets in an over to seal a record-breaking 12th straight victory for Waugh's men. In his fellow Blue, the veteran skipper – already with a wealth of high-quality options at his disposal – had a new type of threat to unleash.

"I knew he wanted me in the team for raw pace," Lee says. "To try to upset the top order – get stuck in and bowl, not Bodyline theory, but not too far off that, to be honest.

"To get the green light from the skipper to run in, bowl bumpers and just bowl as fast as I could, that was pretty exciting."

* * *

Lee took pride in pushing beyond the pain throughout his career. He checks off a litany of issues – "the broken back, the elbow surgery, the six ankle operations" – but barely scratches the surface.

Back and elbow problems came in quick succession to stall his career in the 2000-01 summer, costing him a place on Australia's classic tour of India, and the frustrating interruptions were not uncommon thereafter.

By then it was clear that Lee's skills-set was also well suited to one-day cricket. A five-wicket haul against India on Australia Day 2000 was followed in the next month by another dozen wickets in five games. And while injuries continued to conspire against him, his ability to get on the park is perhaps an underrated feature of his career; and one borne out in the fact that through the 2000s, no fast bowler came close to his 324 ODI wickets.

Together with his express pace, it was the often-spectacular nature of Lee's wickets – from toe-crushing yorkers, well-disguised slower balls or searing bouncers – that quickly turned him into a superstar. The Colgate smile and the good-time celebrations – the chainsaw, the jumps, the ankle flicks – also added to his status as a marketer's dream. Where Shane Warne had brought leg spin back from the dead in the 1990s, Lee was a poster child for speed as the new century dawned.

"(Life) changed almost overnight," he says of that period. "What people don't realise is, when you're the new kid on the block, it's something new, it's fresh – you're on every TV channel, in every 'paper, every cricket magazine, every cricket show, so your name and your face get blasted everywhere."

Lee handled the vast majority of the attention with a smile although he recalls the Barmy Army getting inside his head on the 2001 Ashes tour, where his nine wickets at 55.11 across five Tests was an outlier amid Australia's 4-1 drubbing of the hosts (the one loss was Lee's first in Test cricket, in his 11th match).

"I didn't enjoy the Barmy Army," he says. "I was a bit young and green, they were sledging me, and they got the better of me.

"But it gave me a burning ambition to improve on that campaign in 2005."

* * *

It's difficult to overstate just how significant the 160kph target was for Lee. Reflecting on his career now, he mentions it several times without prompting, explaining how it became a lifetime goal in his childhood, really from the moment he understood its place in fast-bowling lore.

"That means more to me than any wicket I've taken," he says. "Of course, the team comes first – to win the (2003) World Cup, the 16 straight Test wins, that's the pinnacle; that's why you play the game.

"But in terms of personal milestones, it wasn't wickets for me. Because I'd set my goal at such a young age to hit that 160(kph) barrier and to go past it … when you dream about something, you dedicate your life to achieving that dream, and it comes off, it's very special."   

Lee and Pakistani Shoaib Akhtar engaged in a two-man cricketing arms race through that first part of the 2000s, a rivalry the Australian believes pushed him to greater heights than he might otherwise have been capable. And while Shoaib has recorded the faster delivery (161.3kph) it is a point of pride for Lee that he was consistently able to bowl faster for longer than perhaps anyone in the game's history; in January 2014, almost 19 years after his first-class debut as an 18-year-old tearaway, he was still hitting 147kph for Sydney Sixers.

But 160kph is a different stratosphere again. Lee is officially one of only a handful to reach a mark he describes as "like the four-minute mile". He was recorded over 160kph twice, each time amid a golden five-year stretch in ODI cricket (2002-06) during which he took more wickets than anyone.

The first of those was at the 2003 World Cup in South Africa. With Australia surging through the tournament unbeaten, they were tasked with defending 212 in their semi-final against Sri Lanka. With the final ball of his second over, Lee knocked over the in-form Marvan Atapattu with a 160.1kph rocket.

"At that stage we were under a bit of pressure, and needed the best out of me," he says. "And that was to just steam in and bowl as quick as I could on a good length … looking up (at the scoreboard) and seeing I went past 160(kph) was a pretty special moment."

Lee took 3-34 in that semi-final and 2-32 in the final, adding to a hat-trick against Kenya and 5-42 against the Black Caps. The 26-year-old finished second on the World Cup wickets tally and was as fast and impactful as he would ever be.

Around the same time however, his Test career was taking a turn. After his explosive introduction, Lee had taken 67 wickets at 39.40 in 20 matches across a two-year stretch, and when Ponting replaced Steve Waugh as Test skipper in early 2004, the express paceman was initially a casualty.

With Queenslander Michael Kasprowicz preferred as something of a subcontinent specialist, Lee toured Sri Lanka and India that year without playing a Test. Despite ankle surgery sidelining him in between, he still snuck in 18 ODIs through 2004 and another 13 in the first half of 2005 – a period through which he believes he was bowling as well as ever.

"It's quite ironic, I felt my fittest when I bowled my quickest ball (160.8kph) in Napier against the Kiwis, but that was a time when I ended up spending 18 months out of the Test team," he says. "That was when I felt like I probably should've been in, but if you look at the attack we had … there were a number of guys putting their hand up and taking wickets.

"Looking back, I felt like I was raring to go, but I couldn't get the nod. That was hard to take, but I had to get on with it – I had to suck it up. And I knew I just had to keep bowling fast, keep taking wickets in one-day cricket, and the opportunity would present itself."

* * *

If Shane Warne was at the heart of just about all the key moments of the 2005 Ashes, Lee was typically right there beside him. The iconic image of him being consoled by Andrew Flintoff after the heart-stopping climax to the second Test at Edgbaston became the sporting symbol of what many consider the greatest series of all time.

"It's the most amazing series I played in – the most fun I've had during a series, but also the most intense. (The second Test) was probably the most emotional I've ever been after a loss, because we had it – we got so close."

Lee took 20 wickets through five Tests in what was effectively his comeback series, and made some memorable batting contributions as well – none more so than his final-morning 43no in Birmingham. It was a facet of his game that has been lost somewhat with time; his Test batting average of 20.15 speaks to a player who mixed a fairly sound defence with some incredibly clean hitting (as his legendary six out of the Gabba in a 2005 Test against West Indies attests).

It had been four years since his 2001 Ashes woes and he returned to the UK a savvier man, and a better bowler. With Glenn McGrath missing two Tests through injury and Kasprowicz and Jason Gillespie struggling for form, he stepped up in Australia's hour of need.

"I wanted to make sure that I embraced the Barmy Army, and use that," he says. "And I did; I used their energy, I used their sledging and all that excitement to my advantage."

The tourists of course fell short across the five Tests but it was through no fault of Lee's, who tore in tirelessly throughout. In the fourth innings of the fourth Test at Trent Bridge, as Australia looked to defend just 129, Lee – hitting speeds of 155kph – teamed up with Warne to almost bowl their side to a remarkable victory, falling short by three wickets in dramatic scenes.

The vision of Lee charging in on that final afternoon, giving his all until the final delivery, offers the perfect thumbnail sketch of his career.  

"For me, there are two styles of people," he says. "There's one that, when the pressure's on, they'll run and hide. Or there's the other style where you think as an athlete: This is what I'm built for.

"And I look to go the second option: This is the moment that you want. Now, whether or not you win, lose or draw, it doesn't matter. It's the moment that you want to be involved in.

"All those times of adversity that you've overcome – all the injuries, the operations – this is what it's all for. It's all or nothing, everything is on the line, I've got the coat of arms on my chest – let's go. I'm going to do whatever I can to try to knock those pegs over."

* * *

The 2005 Ashes was the beginning of Lee's second coming as a Test cricketer. He would go on to take more wickets under Ponting (171) – the captain he reflects as having ultimately gotten the best out of him – than he did Waugh (137), albeit at a similar average and strike-rate.

In 2005-06 he took 30 wickets at 25.10 in six Tests against South Africa – the most from either side through the home-and-away series' – as Ponting deployed him with the new ball. In the 2005 Boxing Day Test, his high-speed bouncer-yorker combination to remove Jacques Kallis was something to behold, and he again castled the Proteas great – this time with an off-cutter – in the third Test of the return series in South Africa.

That match in Johannesburg was one of the finest of Lee's career. After taking six wickets and scoring a first-innings 64, he batted for almost 90 minutes for a valiant 24no, putting on 19 runs with last man Kasprowicz – his partner at Edgbaston six months earlier – to pull off a run chase of 292.

Around the same time, Lee's enduring quality as a limited-overs bowler was recognised when he hit the No.1 spot on the ICC ODI rankings list, though 12 months later, after dominating the format for the best part of seven years, he was devastated to miss Australia's 2007 World Cup triumph with an ankle injury.

"It was heartbreaking," he says. "We were training at Wellington in New Zealand, getting ready for the World Cup. But there'd been showers the night before and the grass was quite greasy … and I just had a feeling, I just didn't feel comfortable. My instinct was saying, 'Don't do it. Don't do it'.

"And I do everything absolutely, 100 per cent flat out. So (head coach John Buchanan's) hitting balls out to us. We had to scoot around to our right, our left, and pick the ball up and throw it back over the stump … and I lost my footing, and my left ankle went snap, and the pain was absolutely unbearable.

"I remember sitting at home on the lounge with my foot in a boot, watching the boys do such a great job. It was bittersweet. It was a tough thing to look at, wishing I was over there, but that's sport."

The tournament was a farewell for the great McGrath, which for Lee meant a new role as leader of an evolving Test attack.

"When that transition happened, I still remember the words 'Pidgey' (McGrath) told me," he says. "I asked him: 'Any advice now that you're gone – now that I've got to spearhead the attack?'

"And he said, 'Well, when you think about bowling a bouncer, bowl top of off. And when you're thinking of bowling a yorker? Bowl the top of off.

"In other words: Be patient. Normally I'd bowl probably two variations an over – I'd try and bowl a good channel, then I might try a bumper or a yorker.

"But I remember (at home in 2007-08) there were three, four, five overs in a spell where all I focused on was bowling quick and just getting the ball going through to 'Gilly' (wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist) and hitting the top of off stump.

"And that was a moment where I thought: Hang on, this is actually totally different to the role I used to play, but it's working – they just kept nicking off."

Lee took 40 wickets at 20.58 in six Tests that summer against Sri Lanka and India, earning himself the Allan Border Medal amid a record-equalling period of success for Australia. A run of 16 Test wins under Ponting matched the mark set by Waugh's team from 1999-2001, and across the 32 matches, Lee featured in 23, through which his return of 117 wickets (ave 22.43, SR 43.19) was the most of any bowler.

"What Ricky Ponting wanted was different to what Steve Waugh wanted, but that was fine – that was the transition I was making through what was almost a second phase of my career," he says.

"With his guidance and his understanding, and the fields he set, I didn't have to run in and try bowl every single ball at 160k's an hour."

* * *

The short bursts of high pace, however, still proved useful in the back half of Lee's career as the Twenty20 format quickly changed the game. He had dipped his toe into that world via Australia's intermittent early forays, and in the spring of 2007 he took part in the inaugural ICC World T20 tournament in South Africa.

The format was tailor made for the speedster, who had by then established himself as an ODI master. While still in possession of his searing pace, Lee had become a shrewder operator, using his excellent varieties less frequently but to greater effect.

Across those years, he also became something of a T20 fast-bowling trailblazer as well as a hot commodity, winning titles in the first half of 2012 in both the Big Bash League with the Sixers and the Indian Premier League with Kolkata Knight Riders, where he remained hugely popular with Indian fans despite his lack of Test success in that country.

Lee's greatest T20 moment though came courtesy of success with NSW in the 2009-10 Champions League, in which he was Player of the Match in the final, scoring 48 from 31 and taking 2-10, and Player of the Tournament.

The triumph came as something of a late-career renaissance, almost a year after he had hobbled off the MCG in what proved a painful ending to his Test career.

During that 2008 Boxing Day Test against South Africa, Lee was experiencing considerable pain in the middle of his left foot, which an X-ray taken during the lunch break on day two revealed to be a bone stress reaction in his fourth metatarsal.

"I could play through injuries," he says. "I could play with broken bones, and I'd play until literally the bone snapped in half. And I knew that this was something where it wasn't right."

"Alex (Kountouris, team physio) goes, 'All right, mate, you're pretty much done here – we'll have to put your foot in a boot again. I said, 'Bullshit, no way. Inject me. Give me some local (anaesthetic) – I'm going to go back out and bowl'.

"Now I've got a high pain threshold … but the pain of the needle going underneath the foot pad where there's no muscle, oh my God, that was excruciating. And I couldn't feel my front foot, so it went all floppy. I ran in, and after about two overs, as I landed, I heard this snap, and I knew I was in trouble, and unfortunately I had to limp off.

"And about half an hour after that, once the local had worn off, the pain kicked in."

Still only 32, Lee refused to call it quits, instead putting himself through an intense rehab program with an eye towards the 2009 Ashes. He was picked to tour but a week out from the first Test, in a four-day fixture against the England Lions in which he took seven wickets, he tore the intercostal muscle on his left side.

"I'd done all the rehab," he said. "I'd got myself super fit. Done all the training. I knew I was gone, but I kept playing – I wanted to show them I could play through pain, that I wasn't done in terms of pace.

"I fought my way back by the fourth Test, and I didn't get picked. The fifth Test, I was asking the question. I was ready to go. But Tim Nielsen, our coach, said I wasn't ready.

"I said, 'Come and face me then'. And there was a big standoff between coach and bowler. We were both stubborn, and I went down to the nets, and I said, 'Tim, I like you as a bloke – you're my mate – but if you walk in those nets, mate, everything's off limits, because I'm going to show you I'm ready to bowl. Do me a favour and do not go in those nets'.

"And so he stood behind the nets, and I bowled bumpers for an hour. I was bowling quick, and I was ready to go."

Ultimately though, Lee wasn't selected.

"They didn't think I was ready – didn't think I could last the Test match," he says. "And I knew that was it. I knew my Test career was over."

Lee played white-ball internationals for another three years. Having added consecutive ICC Champions Trophy titles to his record, he joined an exclusive group of six pace bowlers to have won 200-plus internationals across the three formats. Of those, only McGrath's winning percentage (68.09) outdoes Lee's (67.08).

In fact, winning was something of a recurring theme in his career. Lee won an extraordinary 54 of his 76 Tests (71 per cent) and lost just 11 (four of those came in his final seven Tests) – a record that puts him behind only Gilchrist in terms of win/loss ratio.

Even in his final professional match – the 2014-15 BBL decider between the Sixers and Scorchers – he fought to the bitter end, claiming two wickets in the final few balls when all seemed lost, only for his side to fall short with a missed run-out chance from the last delivery of the match. It was classic Lee, the type of attitude that saw him push beyond the pain and paved the way for a storied, Hall-of-Fame career.

"I had to know where the ceiling was," he says. "I had to know where the end point was, until my body literally snapped in half."