Face the music

He's young, blond, good-looking, intelligent, polite and musical. Oh, and he's the fastest bowler in the world. The only drawback? Sorry to spoil the celebrations after that win over West Indies, but Brett Lee is Australian, and he'll be coming to England next year as one of the most exciting members of the best Test and one-day teams in the world.

At a depressing time for cricket, when many of us have become cynical about leading players, it has been a relief and a delight to find a highly talented bowler who is as generous and polite as some of his seniors are selfish and egotistical. Lee is fast and fun to watch, and his emergence reminds us that cricket can continually renew itself.

Lee, who's 24 on November 8, made his Test debut in December last year. He immediately took five wickets blitzing the hapless Indians with an impressive combination of skill, raw pace and unadulterated enthusiasm. A few months later, during a one-day game in front of a noisy and passionate sellout crowd at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, Lee equalled the fastest delivery ever recorded by electronic means, with a 156kph (97mph) thunderbolt.

Soon afterwards, in July, an investigation was announced into his bowling action. Three long weeks later the International Cricket Council's panel of experts cleared his name. Lee had already survived career-threatening stress fractures of the lower back six years ago, after which he worked hard at remodelling his action, under Dennis Lillee's tutelage. All this helped him take the throwing allegations in his stride.

Many cricketers, if they're suddenly thrust from relative obscurity to a sort of a pop-star fame, happily believe the most breathless publicity about themselves. They lose their way, their perspective, and become cut off from the real world. A lot of those players live and learn and, often with help from selectors who drop them for a while, come out the other end as reasonably decent human beings.

But Brett Lee seems to be the sort of character whose head will not be swayed by fame and fortune. Certainly success hasn't changed him so far. An easygoing country boy with a politeness that comes to him as naturally as his charming smile, Lee is different. He happily admits to loving classical music and to resorting to the soothing melodies of Mozart when he relaxes away from the game.

"It's a bit different for a fast bowler, isn't it?" Lee admits. "For me, music is the same as the other guys playing golf. They play golf to get away from cricket, to relax. I play music, strum a few chords on my guitar.

"Dad played a lot of classical records around the house and Mum played piano, so I've grown up with music. When I'm on tour I'll take a very mixed lot of CDs. I'd have some Mozart, some Jimmy Barnes, Backstreet Boys - the whole lot. I'm a huge Elvis fan. I appreciate most types of music."

Lee is not just another cricketer who strums a chord or two on the guitar and fantasises that he is a rock star (just as most rock stars wish they were international cricketers). He can actually play.

These days a team singalong in the hotel bar after an important win features Lee on the house piano, mingling passages from Chopin nocturnes with the `60s and `70s rock he also loves. Older brother Shane - an Australian one-day player himself and New South Wales's captain - plays guitar, and younger brother Grant is now a qualified music teacher. Brett and Shane are in a pub band called Six and Out, made up of NSW players, who play regular gigs around Sydney in winter and will soon release their first CD.

Although he no longer needs to work outside cricket, Lee is in his third year on the sales staff of a Sydney men's outfitters - Barclay's. He works there three or four days a week - when cricket allows - and is featured in newspaper ads for the company, which he does free of charge.

Lee has a real job for two reasons: to keep his feet on the ground, and to repay Richard Bowman, his boss, for the support he offered in the early days of his career.

"I've been here for three years," Lee told me as we chatted in a café in the mid-city arcade that houses Barclay's suit shop. "I was working here when I was just playing first-grade cricket. He took a punt on me and now it's paid off. I do those ads because I owe him a lot and it's good to be able to pay him back.

"He's never knocked me back when I've asked for time off for cricket. We agreed from the start that cricket was Number One. If I've come up to him and asked for four months off he's said `take five'. So I work here, then when cricket comes up I go and do that and then come back. He's been right behind me and now I want to look after him.

Lee also sees advantages in avoiding fulltime professional cricket. "I don't really have to work, but it's good for me. So much has happened in the past year that this keeps my feet on the ground. It's a place where I can come and not worry about bowling or batting, and I'm not sitting at home watching TV. I can do something that's teaching me skills - how to meet people and what-have-you.

"It's funny sometimes. People come into the shop to meet me or ask me to sign something. Twelve months ago I was working here and no-one had any idea who I was. Which was good. Still I suppose now it makes a sale a helluva lot easier when you talk cricket, take their minds off the price and nail'em at the end!

Although this may all sound far too sensible for a young cricket star, an express bowler no less, it is not contrived. Brett Lee might receive astute advice - from older brother Shane, from the other members of his close-knit family, from manager Neil Maxwell (a former NSW player), and from mentor Dennis Lillee - but he is also smart enough to take that advice.

After discussions with Shane and Maxwell, Brett recently ignored a lucrative sponsorship offer from a liquor company. It was not the sort of product he wanted to be associated with. Instead he and Shane advertise Weet-Bix, a well-loved Aussie breakfast cereal, and also promote a charity whose aim is to reduce Australia's alarming teenage suicide rate.

So much for Lee the young man. But can he bowl? The evidence is unequivocal. Lee is consistently faster and more accurate than Shoaib Akhtar, seems able to bowl an outswinger with the new ball at full pace, has an excellent yorker and a promising amount of bowling nous.

Lee would have made his Test debut two games earlier if the selectors had acceded to the wishes of captain Steve Waugh and then vice-captain Shane Warne and included him in the XI for the Third Test against Pakistan at Perth last winter. Michael Kasprowicz was given a deserved chance instead, but a few weeks later the word went out: Lee just had to come into the Test side.

In a Sheffield Shield game at Perth, Lee had launched an astonishing onslaught, the fastest bowling seen in Australia since the days of Jeff Thomson back in the `70s. He broke Jo Angel's arm, and frightened his own fielders, let alone the West Australian batsmen.

"Well, I've been told by the NSW boys, Mark and Steve Waugh, that's the quickest they've ever seen me bowl," Lee says. "It felt heaps quicker than when I was clocked at 156kph in South Africa. Perth was the quickest I've bowled. I just wish they'd had a speed camera there. But the most important thing to me is taking wickets. People ask me if I think about reaching 160 [about 100mph]. That doesn't worry me as long as I'm taking wickets."

Lee is as excited as other Australians about the prospect of sharing the ball with Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie for the first time this summer. Gillespie is back from a one-year lay-off caused by the broken leg he suffered in that horrific collision with Steve Waugh in Sri Lanka last year, and McGrath is simply the best in the business. The trio might just develop into the best fast-bowling combination Australia has had since Lillee and Thomson ruled the world.

"It's very exciting. I'm very good mates with Dizzy [Gillespie], and it's just great to see him back. I'm looking forward to playing at the WACA, taking the West Indies on there in the Second Test. It'll be huge."

Add a spinner called Warne ("Yeah, he's not too bad, is he?" Lee laughs) and a quality back-up swing bowler like Damien Fleming, and Australia will bring a powerful attack to England next year. However, after six consecutive one-sided Ashes series, there is always the chance that a new generation of Australian cricketer might think the gloss has faded from cricket's oldest rivalry. Brett Lee was only 10 when Australia last lost a series to England. Where do the Ashes rate now?

"Number One", he says. "Doing an Ashes tour is the cream of the crop for any cricketer growing up in Australia. The biggest thing for me so far was getting my baggy green cap and playing my first Test. I think if I get a chance to go and play in England it would be a dream come true.

"We've got such a love-hate relationship with the English people, it'd be great to knock them off. We actually enjoy playing against England. We love it. They're very competitive and that's what Test cricket is all about: Australia playing England."

Lee might bring the best of feelings and intension to England next year; but he won't be able to pack local experience along with the Mozart and Elvis CDs. Strangely, he has never played in England, although when I point out that the ball travels through the air just as fast in England as anywhere else, he flashes that smile.

"Exactly."

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Brett Lee

Born Nov 8, 1976, Wollongong New South Wales
First-class debut 1994-95 for Australian cricket Academy, NSW debut 1997-98
Test debut 1999-2000 v India at Melbourne; took 5-47 in 1st inns. After 5 Tests, has 31 wkts at 16.06
ODI debut 1999-2000 v Pakistan, Brisbane, After 19 matches, has 32 wkts at 22.43. BB 5-27 v. India, Adelaide, has taken 3 wkts in inns 6 more times
Family ties Brother Shane (born Aug 8 1973) has played 43 ODIs for Australia since 1995-96
Back and forth Has had a reputation as a lightning-fast bowler since his teens, but suffered back problems in 1994-95, and again, to lesser extent, in 1998. Worked on strengthening his back and remodelling his action with Dennis Lillee. During the Australian Academy tour of South Africa in 1998 coach Rod Marsh said Lee was the fastest thing he'd seen since Thomson, and was a must for the Test team

Caught speeding The race to 100mph
99.7 mph Jeff Thomson 160.45 kph, Australia v West Indies, Test, 1975-76
97.0 mph Brett Lee 156 kph, Australia v South Africa, ODI, Johannesburg 1999-2000
97.0 mph Shoaib Akhtar 156 kph, Pakistan v South Africa, ODI, Sharjah 1999-2000
94.3 mph Nantie Hayward 151 kph, South Africa v England, Test, Port Elizabeth, 1999-2000
93.7 mph Darren Gough 149.8 kph, England v West Indies, Test, Edgbaston 2000
Thomson's delivery was measured using different equipment to the current Speedster radar-gun. But he also claims he wasn't trying very hard at the time