Lee aims for greater things

Brett Lee has warmed up for the Ashes series by telling his opponents the best is yet to come. Over the past year Lee has assumed the attack leader's responsibilities in both forms of the game and he will be a key weapon against England this summer.

"I'm 29 now and they reckon a fast bowler doesn't reach maturity until he's 30," Lee said in the Daily Telegraph. "So there is no reason why I can't get faster and faster, but it's going to take a lot of hard work."

The signs of maturity in Lee showed when he spoke at the 100-day countdown to the Ashes of the need to work out batsmen instead of knocking them over with speed. "You can bowl fast and pick up the odd wicket by scaring a batsman, but Test cricket batsmen don't scare any more," he said. "You've got to really work a batsman out which is why Glenn [McGrath] has done so well."

After 18 months out of the Test side, Lee returned for the 2005 Ashes and since then has picked up 72 wickets in 17 matches. Last summer he became Ricky Ponting's main fast man, especially after McGrath withdrew from the squad to be with his sick wife, and was exhausted after back-to-back series in South Africa and Bangladesh.

Since the end of the Bangladesh tour Lee has got married and this week he will fine-tune with Troy Cooley, the new national bowling coach. "We'll talk about workload ... how he's going and his build up for the next couple of series," Cooley told AAP. "It's up to Brett to work out what he wants to do, where he wants to go and then we start to build a relationship from there."

Andrew Flintoff's expected return from ankle surgery for the series, which begins in Brisbane on November 23, has excited Lee. "If we are going to be playing against England we want them at their strongest," he said. "They beat us fair and square and we want another crack."