By IANS,
Melbourne : Australian bowling coach Troy Cooley believes that out-of-form pace bowling spearhead Brett Lee will rebound from form slump to lead the pace attack in the coming seasons.
“Brett is the one the other bowlers in the group look up to. He is a bloke with 300 wickets, is the reigning Allan Border medallist and has a lot of pride and skill,” Cooley was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Lee was listless during the tour of India and his lack of impact in the Perth Test was a major factor in the South Africa’s six-wicket victory in contrast to Mitchell Johnson’s 11-wicket haul. It has raised inevitable questions as to whether the spearhead role has been changed.
But Cooley remained adamant saying that it is not the case. The veteran coach believes Lee will return to top form when he has accounted for the training time lost during his marriage breakdown on the eve of the tour of India.
“His build-up to India was difficult in terms of his personal life and I don’t need to go into that. He had a bit of ground to make up. When you’re a fast bowler in the modern game, you’ve got be strong and fit and you can’t start a series behind the eight-ball, like in India,” Cooley said.
“With the amount of cricket they’re playing, you can’t afford those little hiccups. There’s not really any time between games to walk away and get things right, and that means you have to try and make up that ground in the middle. You have to do it while you’re playing.”
The questions that is doing the rounds now is that whether Lee, like many pacemen before him, would sacrifice his raw pace to guile and movement.
“He will be the one to decide when or if he wants to start making changes to his game. He is working his backside off to make everything right, and ticking all the boxes asked of him
“As a coach, you get good feedback from the fitness guys about the work he’s done and where he’s at, and that’s one of the big attributes you need to keep producing. He matured immensely as a bowler over the last few years and you saw that in how he went about taking 60 wickets last year. He can do whatever he wants to in the game,” said Cooley.