It’s a Sunday morning in August 2005 and the final act of the greatest Test of the finest Ashes series ever is about to begin.
He steps off the coach and walks to the changing room, where the captain, Ricky Ponting, calls the Australians together for some final words of encouragement: Australia require 107 runs to win, but have just two wickets in hand. “Let’s see if we can give them a fright,” Ponting says. But for Lee, one of the three remaining batsmen, the day begins horrendously when he makes his way to the nets.
He can’t hit a ball during the warm-up. The coach, John Buchanan, is chucking down the balls, but Lee keeps getting bowled, much to the delight of a group of England supporters who have gathered behind the nets. “This is going to be easy,” they sneer. “It will be over in two minutes. Lee, you’re going to be out.” A short distance away, Ponting and Michael Clarke are laughing and shaking their heads.
“Oh Christ!” Ponting groans.
“Best of luck, mate,” Clarke chirps.
Lee grits his teeth, dances down the pitch and smacks one over their heads. Suddenly he feels more confident.
Game time. He marches out to bat with Shane Warne and the innings resumes with some impressive boundaries that slice into the deficit and silence the Barmy Army. Batting like men with nothing to lose, they continue to play beautifully, encouraged by a group of Australian fans who are chanting every score: “66 runs to go . . . 62 runs to go” . . . until Warne is dismissed when he steps on his wicket.
“It was a crushing blow,” Lee says. “Out came Michael Kasprowicz with 62 runs to get, but you could feel that they were suddenly lifted. The English crowd got behind their bowlers and there was suddenly an extra spring in their step.”
They keep chipping away; the deficit keeps falling; the drinks break arrives; 30 runs required. “Let’s not worry about the runs, just focus on the ball,” he advises Kasprowicz. Ponting and Clarke are watching on the balcony. “At least it’s good that we’ve got this close,” Clarke observes. “It’s not over yet,” Ponting replies.
Play resumes; 10 more runs are accrued; Lee is struck a stinging blow to the hand from an Andrew Flintoff lifter. “I got nailed,” he says. “My hand was so swollen; I was battered and bruised and getting pinned with every ball, but I didn’t care what happened as long as they didn’t take my wicket. I loved being out there and was really enjoying the challenge. We got down to about 18 runs and suddenly the momentum had swung our way and the pressure was on England. You could see it in their faces: ‘We can’t lose this’.”
The deficit has now reached single figures. Steve Harmison has the ball. Lee is on strike. The tension is unbearable. A boundary will win the Test. Harmison bowls a ball that pitches just outside off stump, Lee sees it early and hits a superb cover drive that is worthy of winning the match. Ashley Giles is fielding at fine leg. “I saw the shot and thought, ‘That’s that’,” recalls Giles. But Simon Jones, fielding at sweeper, makes the crucial intervention.
“That was my opportunity to win the match,” Lee recalls. “I’ve hit it as hard as I have ever hit a cricket ball, but it went straight to the guy at forward point. If it was half a metre to his left or to his right, it would have been game over, and if we had won that game, the series would have been a lot different. But the game is full of ‘could haves’ and ‘what ifs’ and I don’t believe in that kind of thing.”
Australia require three runs to win; Harmison is bowling; Kasprowicz is on strike. Lee watches from the non-striker’s end as his teammate fends off a bouncer, it hits his glove and is caught by the diving wicketkeeper, Geraint Jones.
Lee slumps to his knees in despair. “It was like I’d been shot,” he says. “The energy and adrenaline were sucked straight out of me and I felt so deflated and helpless, like I had let the country down. In the span of five seconds you think of a thousand things.
“I felt really sad for Kasper after the way that he batted and so disappointed for the team. I was distraught. And then I felt a tap on my shoulder and I looked up and it was Freddie.”
WE MEET on a Tuesday afternoon in Bombay during the Champions Trophy. He strides into the lobby of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel wearing a team issue leisure suit and his trademark beatific smile. It is the first time I’ve met the smiling assassin and the interview begins with a review of a couple of vital statistics that I’ve pulled from the web.
Full Name: Brett Lee Nickname: Binga Date of Birth: November 8, 1976 Place of Birth: Oak Flats, New South Wales, Australia.
Currently resides: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Family: parents — Helen & Bob, and brothers — Shane (older), Grant (younger).
Marital Status: married Liz (nee Kemp) on June 3, 2006.
Occupation: Australian cricketer and suit salesman at Barclays Menswear.
Best advice ever received: don’t assume.
Favourite Movie: The Shawshank Redemption.
Favourite way to relax away from cricket: playing music.
Cricketing heroes: Dennis Lillee and Allan Donald.
“Suit salesman?” I say. “You used to work at a menswear shop?” “I still do,” he says.
“You do?” “Yeah, I was actually on the phone to my boss last night. We’re talking about bringing my clothing label over here to India.”
“Your clothing label?” He reaches into his wallet and produces a business card for Brett Lee Clothing stamped: “Brett Lee, Director”.
“We launched the label in 2001,” he explains.
“Why should anyone buy Brett Lee clothing?” I ask.
“Quality,” he replies. “We sourced a great manufacturer with quality fabrics and have moved from shirts and jeans into mainly corporate now — suits, shirts and ties.”
“You have an eye for fashion?” “Yeah.”
“How did that come about?” The month is February 1994. He has just been selected for an under-19 tour to India and has been instructed by Cricket Australia to have his official team blazer fitted at the Barclays menswear store in Sydney. His mother, Helen, drives him to the fitting from their home in Oak Flats, about 60 miles south of Sydney, and his measurements are taken by the store’s immaculately dressed proprietor, Richard Bowman, who makes an instant impression as “the world’s best bloke” .
Six months later, Lee is kicking his heels at home when the phone rings.
“Brett?” “Yeah.”
“It’s Richard Bowman.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Have you ever thought about a job in menswear?” “No, not really.”
“Are you in work at the moment?” Bowman asks.
“No, I’m playing grade cricket and concentrating on that,” Lee says.
“What about a job to complement your cricket?” “Well, I’d be happy to come in and have a chat.”
The next day he makes his way to Sydney for an early-morning interview and within half an hour he has landed the job.
His first experience on the floor is a nightmare. He is accosted by a middle- aged businessman with precise demands on a suit: “I’m looking for a single-breasted three-button with a notch lapel,” he barks, firing out the measurements. Lee is flummoxed. Single-breasted? Notch lapel? It sounds like a different language! “I’m sorry, sir,” the new assistant gushes, “I’d better get my boss.”
But when Bowman arrives, he is grinning from ear to ear. “Have you met my best friend yet, Brett?” he says and laughs. The kid has been set up.
“We just hit it off from there,” Lee recalls, “and he was great for my cricket: I had state training on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at the Sydney Cricket Ground and he would let me go at 2.30pm. And every time I had a tour he’d support me as well.”
“Did you have any authentic awkward moments?” I inquire.
“Heaps,” he replies. “I’ve had times when I’ve been pinning a suit and I’ve pinned the jacket to the shirt the customer was wearing. Or you might be hanging someone’s trousers and prick yourself — but these things happen. It’s all part and parcel of the business.”
“And you like the business?”“I love it. If someone gives you an opportunity in life, you should always stick with them, and I made myself a promise that I would stick by Richie the whole way. He didn’t teach me only about suits, he taught me about life and how to deal with people. He taught me how a business works; the stock, the invoices, the cash register, the computer, how to make a business plan. It’s something I enjoy; I was in there working before I came away (for the Champions Trophy).” “Really?” “Yeah, it’s just a great reality check. I remember after the South African Test series I flew in at 11.30pm on a Sunday night and on Monday morning at 9am I was in there working. And after about an hour this South African came in and starts looking at me. ‘Weren’t you bowling last night in Jo’burg?’ he says. I said, ‘Yeah mate, but it’s back to the real world now’. But he couldn’t believe it. ‘Don’t you need a rest?’ he asks. I said, ‘No, this is what I like to do. It gets my mind away from cricket and puts some balance in my life’.”
“What was the South African buying?” I wonder.
“Just a normal suit,” Lee says. “I was talking to him in Afrikaans. He said, ‘I can’t believe this’, but that gave me another edge to make the sale. I love the challenge of making a sale and look at a customer in much the same way as I look at a batsman when I’m preparing to bowl. You study him walking through the door, size him up and work on his weakness and try to take his wicket and make the sale.”
“Okay,” I announce, warming to the theme. “Let’s say that I’m the guy walking into Barclays and you’re the guy sizing me up. What’s my weakness? How are you going to take my wicket?” He looks me up and down and smiles.
“No, on second thoughts, don’t answer that,” I recant.
But he has already started to bowl.
“You’d be what we call a stout fitting,” he says. “A double-breasted suit would make you look short, so I’d put you in a single-breasted, three-button in colours that you obviously liked. I can see what you’re wearing now and you obviously like blue, so you’re probably not the type of guy who would wear dull colours. You want to be upbeat. I think I could work you out.”
Howzat? Sold.
OAK FLATS is a two-hour drive south of Sydney, near Wollongong. His father, Bob, was born in Cairns in northern Queens- land, but followed his family here to find work. Helen was a talented sportswoman from Maitland in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, whose foremost love was the piano. They brought three sons into the world and cossetted each with security and love. Brett was the antichrist who could never sit still. “What are you going to achieve with your life?” his exasperated mother would fume occasionally.
“I’m going to be the world’s fastest bowler,” he’d reply.
“From the time I was a kid I knew I had a decent arm,” he says. “I felt like I could throw the ball further than most other kids and then we’d try to bowl fast and I felt I could bowl faster. And then you start breaking a few stumps and earn a reputation around the local grades and you almost start feeding off that positive energy.”
The year is 1987. A young batsman called Wesley has arrived at Oak Flats for a trial with the under-12’s. They’ve all heard about Wesley; he’s the “gun” batsman from the neighbouring school and reputed to be pretty useful. The Oak Flats coach throws the ball to Lee. “Now Brett,” he says. “You’re the man to test him out. Bowl him some bumpers.”
“Okay,” the kid replies.
He takes a long run and flings down a bouncer. Wesley isn’t wearing a helmet and is caught flush in the mouth. The blood is everywhere. Wesley’s front teeth have been shoved into his gums. “I’m not a big fan of blood,” Lee recalls, “and I was instantly sick. I went up to him and said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it’ and went home completely shattered. I didn’t train for a week. I didn’t want to play the game again. My dad got in touch with his parents and offered to pay the dentist’s bills and I was coaxed to play again.”
Over the next five years he continued to rise through the grades until the 1994 tour to India with the under-19s — his first national selection and first time out of Australia. “I was two years younger than most people and nervous. It was my first time to leave home, and five weeks in India was a challenging trip: challenging country, challenging food, challenging conditions. I remember at one of the grounds it was really, really hot and I think I had heatstroke. I stood under the shower with my head back and swallowed some water, and three hours later I was really, really sick.”
Nothing had prepared him for the poverty.
“We went out one night and stumbled across this place which served Hawaiian pizza, my favourite pizza, and after four weeks of curry every night it was like, ‘We’re eating here for the rest of the trip’. We came out the first night and some little boys and girls came up asking for money and food, so I gave them my last slice of pizza. The next night we went back and ordered three or four pizzas and just handed them out.
“The thing I like about this country is that you will find people on the streets without a cent to their name, but give them a wave or smile at them and they’ll instantly light up. They are a really friendly people, a happy race.”
It was five more years before Lee made his Test debut. A frustrating series of back and ankle injuries had slowed his progress, but in December 1999 he was in the form of his life. He took four for 25 playing for the Prime Minister’s XI against India and was picked for the Boxing Day Test after an eight-wicket match return for New South Wales against Western Australia, when he bowled spells described by Mark Waugh as the quickest he had seen.
His first baggy green was everything he had imagined it would be. “The cap means everything,” he says. “It embraces the history of the game and the way Australian cricket should be played and those who have been there before you. The first time I put it on, I felt like Superman. It’s almost as if you grow an extra foot.”
Soon after a remarkable five-wicket haul on his Test debut (fittingly against India), Lee was selected for the one-day international series with Pakistan and India. For the third game he was included in the team alongside his elder brother, Shane. “It was the first time in Australian cricket that two sets of brothers had played in the same team (the Waughs also played) and walking out and seeing Shane with the No 20 on his back, and I’ve got the No 58, I thought that nothing would better it. I mean, you dream as a kid of playing with Australia, but not with your own brother! I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.”
The 16 months that followed proved a rollercoaster ride for the world’s fastest bowler. During a Test series in New Zealand his bowling action was called into question and investigated by the International Cricket Council, before being cleared. And then, in a freak accident during a one-day match against Zimbabwe in Perth, he threw a ball in from the deep and snapped his ulna — the first reported incident of a cricketer breaking his arm throwing a ball.
Just returned from injury, he travelled to England for his first Ashes series in June 2001, but did not enjoy the summer. “It was a pretty lean series for me. Nine wickets out of five matches is not what I wanted from my first Ashes campaign. I was fit and ready to play, but just didn’t do what I meant to do. The Barmy Army gave me a fair bit of grief, but it was all part of growing up.”
But there was more growing to do. He spent 18 months out of the Test team during the build-up to the 2005 Ashes and was expected to play a supporting role to Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Kasprowicz when the squad left for England. But when McGrath was injured and Gillespie didn’t fire, the stage was suddenly his, and how he shone.
HE HAS never watched a replay of that Sunday morning at Edgbaston, but with a blink of an eye he can rewind immediately to the Pink Panther man and the guys dressed like hounds and the sound of England rejoicing and the agony of Simon Jones’s fielding and the power cut to his legs when the battle was finally lost. And he can still feel the brush of that hand on his shoulder and his surprise when he looked up and saw it was Flintoff, but he can’t quite recall what was said. “
It was something along the lines of, ‘Mate, that was brilliant; thanks for such a great game’. And I said, ‘Mate, thanks very much, I really appreciate that — now go off and celebrate with your mates, because you’ve earned it’. And since that we’ve been really good friends. I appreciate him as a cricketer and he’s a great person, the world’s greatest bloke, but I was just so disappointed at the time that I couldn’t speak.”
Defeat was not something he had experienced often with this team. “We had to deal with it, talk about it and get over it, but it definitely left a scar,” he says. “We came out and won that first Test at Lord’s and thought we were going to go out and dictate the next game as well. We definitely got caught off guard. We didn’t expect they would come at us as hard as they did. We didn’t sum up the situation as quickly as we should have, and it cost us the series.
“The bottom line is we just weren’t good enough, and you’ve got to give England all of the accolades because they played some great cricket and we have to accept that. All professional sportspeople go through those times, but it’s how you deal with it that makes you a better player and a better person. We’ve played 12 Test matches since and won all but one of them; we’re a lot more hungry now; we’ve learnt from it.”
“What about the build-up? How has it compared to last time?” I ask.
“I think it started after we lost,” he says. “It’s been absolutely massive in Australia — I was invited to cut a cake (in front of the Sydney Opera House last August) to celebrate 100 days to when the first ball would be bowled in Brisbane and the media interest was incredible. This will be the biggest series I ever play a part in.” “But hasn’t there been some silliness?” I suggest.
“Glenn McGrath has talking about 5-0 again.” “Well,” he says with a smile, “Glenn is the type of player who will say, ‘I’m going to go out and knock the first three batsmen over’ and he will probably do it because he’s Glenn and that’s the way he operates. I’m a bit different; I try to let my bowling do the talking. Yeah, there has been a lot of hype and I’m sure that when we get down to 10 days to go there will be a lot more hype, but that’s all part of the fun.
“The slate will be clean at 11 o’clock in Brisbane when that first ball is bowled. It doesn’t matter what’s happened recently with England; it doesn’t matter what’s happened recently with Australia, there’s going to be a lot of nerves on both sides on November 23. It’s a love/hate thing. England hate to lose to Australia; we hate to lose to England, but there’s respect on both sides. And there will be some great cricket played.”
Brett Lee will be writing a column for The Sunday Times throughout the Ashes
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