Lee turns down counties to be fresh for the Ashes

Brett Lee will knock back "four or five" English county offers after Cricket Australia advised him to stay fresh for the Ashes. Despite a summer that has carried six Tests as 12th man, Lee will not use the break between the New Zealand tour in March and the start of the Ashes Tour in June for match practice.

Neil Maxwell, Lee's manager, said Lee had talks with the Australia selectors and was expected to decline a lucrative short-term contract. "They are keen for him to give it a miss and we would be silly not to follow their advice," Maxwell told the Daily Telegraph. "They felt it would be too much of a drain on him."

While the selectors have asked him to slow down, Lee's team-mates are telling him to hurry up because his run-up is threatening to cost them extra time and money. Ricky Ponting and Darren Lehmann have both advised him to speed up as Australia have regularly fallen behind their over rates during the VB Series.

"It is an issue for us," Lehmann said. "That's probably why we sometimes have to bowl myself and Andrew Symonds - probably not at the ideal time - to make sure we get our overs in. Lee's got a long run, he knows that. He's got to be quicker through his overs."

Ponting told the Daily Telegraph "it was a bit of a concern". "There are times when sometimes I am forced to bowl the spinners when I probably wouldn't want to because we are so far behind," he said. When a side fails to bowl its overs each player is fined 5% of their match fee per over and the captain's loss is doubled. "It is something we have to address and get better at," Ponting said.