BrEtT LeE

Brett Lee (born 8 November 1976 in Wollongong, New South Wales) is an Australian cricketer.
After breaking into the Australian Test team, Lee was recognised as one of the fastest bowlers in world cricket. In each of his first two years, he averaged less than 20 with the ball, but since then has mostly achieved figures in the mid 30s.[1]
He is an athletic fielder and useful lower-order batsman, with a batting average exceeding 20 in Test cricket. Together with Mike Hussey, he holds the record for highest 7th wicket partnership for Australia in ODIs since 2005–2006 (123).[2]

Style
Lee is an express bowler, one of the fastest the game has known, and is capable of bowling at 160 km/h (99 mph). Lee's fastest recorded delivery to date is 160.8 km/h (99.9 mph) which he bowled in his first over on March 5, 2005 at Napier, New Zealand against Craig Cumming.[3] He is also an athletic fielder and aggressive lower-order batsman with a batting average exceeding 20.
Lee ranks with Pakistani bowler Shoaib Akhtar as the fastest bowler in contemporary cricket.[4] Akhtar's delivery at 161.3km/h (100.2mph) stands as the fastest recorded to date.[5]
Lee's speed allows opposition batsmen less time to react, increasing their chances of making a mistake and has bowled with great accuracy as Australia's bowling spearhead. He has a Test bowling average of just under thirty, which sees him ranked in the 5th in the International Cricket Council's Test bowling rankings.
Early in his career, Lee was reported for a suspected illegal bowling action, but was cleared.[6] He was also criticised in early 2005 for bowling a series of beamers at batsmen during ODIs, at a rate which lead some to claim he was deliberately bowling illegal head high full tosses at batsmen.[7][8]
Lee is at his most effective on the pitches of the southern hemisphere, where the pitches have greater bounce. In the northern hemisphere, he has taken 53 wickets in 19 Tests at an average of 42.11. In the southern hemisphere, he has taken 178 wickets in 40 matches at 28.48. He has had the most success against the West Indies and New Zealand, averaging in the low twenties. He averages more than 40 against England, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and in the 30s against other teams.[9]

Childhood and early career
Lee is the second of three sons born to Bob, a metallurgist and Helen (née Buxton), a piano teacher [1] . He has two brothers, the elder being former Australian all rounder and New South Wales Blues captain Shane Lee and a younger brother Grant, now an accountant and concert pianist, who played cricket for New South Wales at the under-19 level. Lee attended Balarang Public School and Oak Flats High School, which later named its cricket ground in his honour. His nickname 'Bing' refers to 'Bing Lee', after a chain of electronics stores in New South Wales.
The brothers enjoyed soccer, basketball and skiing and were encouraged to play the piano by their mother. Lee was introduced to the game of cricket at the age of eight by his brother Shane. He played his first formal game of cricket for the Oak Flats Rats where he took 6/0 from one over or 6 wickets for 0 runs, all of his wickets being bowled..[citation needed] At sixteen years of age, Lee began playing first grade cricket for Campbelltown, where he managed to claim the wickets of a few New South Wales cricketers. He later joined Mosman, where at one point, he shared the new ball with Shoaib Akhtar.[10]
Lee also played for the Australian Under 17 & 19 teams and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Australian Cricket Academy.
In March 1994, Lee was forced out of the Australian under-19 team to tour India due to stress fractures in his lower back. He recovered and made his first-class debut for New South Wales against Western Australia in a Sheffield Shield match as a 20-year old in the 1997–98 season, playing one match and taking 3/114.[11]
One month later, Lee was chosen to represent the Australian A team on a tour to South Africa. He claimed two wickets but in that very match, stress fractures in his back from the previous injury had re-opened and Lee was in a back brace for over three months. When he turned twenty-one, Lee moved to Sydney to be closer to work.[citation needed]
During the 1997-98 season, he played in five of the ten Sheffield Shield games, taking fourteen wickets at 30. He finished outside the top 20 in both the wicket taking list and the bowling averages.[12]
In 1999, during a Sheffield Shield match at Perth, Lee bowled a spell against the Western Australian batsmen, compared the fastest bowling seen in Australia since the days of Jeff Thomson back in the 1970s. From that point, Australian captain Steve Waugh and then vice-captain Shane Warne began pushing for Lee's inclusion in the Test team.

Test career
By the late 1990s there were calls for Lee to be included in the national squad. He was eventually chosen in the final 14 for the Test series against Pakistan in 1999 but failed to make the final 11. By the time the Test series against India came around, he was twelfth man. However, he duly made his Test debut for Australia in December 1999 against the touring Indians, becoming Australia's 383rd Test cricketer.
Bowling first change, Lee took a wicket in his first over in Test cricket when he bowled Sadagoppan Ramesh with his fourth delivery. He also captured Rahul Dravid in his first spell before returning to take three wickets in six balls to finish the innings with figures of 5/47 from 17 overs. Australia had batted first, and Lee had earlier made 27 runs. Lee took thirteen wickets in his opening two Tests at the low average of 14.15.
Lee won the inaugural Donald Bradman Young Player of the Year Award at the Allan Border Medal award ceremony in 2000 soon after his debut.
During the early 2000 tour to New Zealand, Lee was reported by umpires Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Arani Jayaprakash for a suspected illegal bowling action. He was later cleared.
Lee took 42 wickets in his opening three series, the most by any Australian bowler in the seven matches he played.[13] However, in his seventh Test, where he took seven wickets including a five wicket haul in the second innings against the West Indies, he suffered a stress fracture of the lower back which kept him out of three following Tests. He returned against Zimbabwe but soon suffered another setback a month later when he broke his right elbow and was sidelined until May 2001.

Test return
Brett Lee bowling against South Africa at the WACA in 2005
After 18 months on the sidelines and a plea to the selectors and media regarding his constant position as 12th man in the team, Lee returned to the Test team in the 2005 Ashes series. With Michael Kasprowicz and Jason Gillespie both struggling for form, Lee returned to take the new ball with Glenn McGrath. He averaged 40 with the ball for the series, which some commentators have put down to having to bowl longer spells than he was accustomed to at the time, but was retained, in part because of his defiant batting which yielded runs at an average of 26.33. Despite his high bowling average for the series he was considered by many as one of Australia's best players along with leg-spinner Shane Warne and batsman Justin Langer.[21] as well as injuries to McGrath.
Part of Lee's difficulty at Test level is that the benefits of his high speed, which give the batsmen less reaction time, also results in more erratic bowling. In recent times he has tried to concentrate solely on accuracy by reducing speed. During the first Test against the West Indies in late 2005 at the Gabba, after declaring that he would sacrifice pace and focus on 'line and length',[22] Lee reverted to his initial style of bowling, based on the advice of his captain Ricky Ponting after his new method of bowling failed in the first innings.[23] This saw him take 5/30 his fifth five-wicket haul in Tests, his first in four years.

One-day International career
Lee bowling against Pakistan at Lord's, 2004-09-04
Lee made his debut in One Day International for Australia against Pakistan on 9 January 2000 during the Carlton and United Breweries Series at the Gabba, Brisbane. He became the 140th ODI cricketer to represent Australia.
In One-day Internationals Lee is widely regarded as one of the world's finest and most feared bowlers, he was ranked by the ICC as the No. 1 ODI bowler in January 2006[29] and has been ranked among the top ten ODI bowlers since the start of 2003. He has a wide array of deliveries including a dangerous in-swinging yorker. His bowling strike rate of around 30 puts him amongst the most incisive in this form of the game. He also has a One-day International hat-trick to his name, achieved in the 2003 World Cup against Kenya. Lee was the first Australian and fourth bowler to ever achieve this feat in World Cup history.
In the matches Australia played in the 2005-06 triangular one day series, Lee gave a display of his useful batting abilities by making 57 in the second game in a 100 run partnership with Michael Hussey to pull Australia out of a middle order collapse. However, he is yet to consistently contribute with his batting, and his current ICC ranking hovers around the 90-100 region.

Cricket World Cup 2003
During the 2003 Cricket World Cup, Brett Lee was one of the leading performers for Australia. He concluded the tournament with 22 wickets off 83.1 overs at an average of 17.90 finishing second to Sri Lankan left-arm fastbowler Chaminda Vaas who took 23 wickets during that tournament. Lee also had a third leading strike-rate of 22.68 behind West Indian fastbowler Vasbert Drakes and Australian counterpart Andrew Bichel who topped the strike-rates with 19.43 and 21.37 respectively.
Lee earned six of his 22 wickets during the group stage, 11 wickets during the Super-six stage, 3 from the semi-final and 2 wickets from the final. He took one five wicket haul, 5 for 42, during this World Cup which was against the Australians' Trans-Tasman rivals New Zealand during their super-six encounter at Port Elizabeth. He also earned his first international hat-trick with figures of 3 for 14 against Kenya during the last match of the super-six stage.
Brett Lee peaked during this tournament in terms of his bowling speed. It was at this world cup Lee bowled his previous fastest recorded delivery of 160.7km/h against England at Port Elizabeth during their group match.

Awards
The Donald Bradman Young Player of the Year 2000
The Wisden Young Cricketer of the Year 1999-2000
Wisden Cricketer of the Year 2006
Chosen in "Australia's Greatest ODI XI", selected by former and present Australian ODI representatives
Chosen in the ODI Team of the Year 2005 at the ICC Awards
Chosen in the Test Team of the Year 2006 at the ICC Awards
Chosen in the ODI Team of the Year 2006 at the ICC Awards
VB Series Player of the Series 2002-03
VB Series Player of the Series 2004–05
DLF Cup Player of the Tournament 2006
Warne-Muralitharan Trophy Player of the Series 2007
Border-Gavaskar Trophy Player of the Series 2007/08
2007 McGilvray Medallist for ABC's Australian Test Player of the year.
2008 Australian Test Player of the Year[32]
2008 Allan Border Medallist[33]
Chosen in the ODI Team of the Year 2008 at the ICC Awards
Chosen in the Test Team of the Year 2008 at the ICC Awards