brett lee

Lee is the second of three sons born to Bob, a metallurgist and Helen (née Buxton), a piano teacher.[10] He has two brothers, the elder being former Australian all rounder and New South Wales Blues captain Shane Lee. His younger brother Grant played cricket for New South Wales at the under-19 level, and is now an accountant. 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 (Grant is a qualified pianist).[11] Brett 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.[12] He still lives on the Lower North Shore of Sydney today, in the suburb of Lane Cove.

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.[13]

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.[14]

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