Significant Boxing Day debuts are topical this week, with 19-year-old Sam Konstas poised to be fast-tracked into the team on account of his prolific first full season and a dearth of proactive options at the top of the Australian batting order.

Lee’s ascension to the Australian side felt rapid in some ways but a slow burn in others. As the younger brother of the all-rounder Shane Lee, Brett was often talked about as a genuinely fast bowler, mentioned in dispatches from his mid-teens.

But a litany of back injuries and remodels of his bowling action meant that Lee was in his sixth season in the first-class system (but played only 10 games in his first five summers) when a series of terrifying spells for New South Wales against Western Australia at the WACA Ground vaulted him into the race for the Test team.

“That was the turning point in my career,” Lee said. “I still think it’s the quickest I ever bowled, and unfortunately, it wasn’t recorded. I played a couple of weeks later and bowled 156km/h in my first game and felt nowhere near like what I was bowling at the WACA.”