GIVEN the story currently doing the rounds, Shane Lee might have been expected to be shuffling around his flat attached to a ball and chain, writes BRIAN DOOGAN.

Happily, he wasn't and he was more than happy to put the record straight.

Just to fill you in, the rumour factory alleges that en route to the EW Cartons Lancashire League from sunny Australia, Enfield CC professional Lee and flat-mate Brad McNamara, the pro for Haslingden, had a skirmish with the law and were booked into a London cell for the night.

Not true, says Lee who at 6ft 2in and with shoulders the breadth of a meadow - his nickname - is not the type of guy to readily pick an argument with.

"I got a call from the New South Wales physio, asking us, 'Are you guys all right?'" said Lee, in the cosy living room of his Haslingden town-centre flat.

"We said 'Yeah' and he said: 'Ive heard you were locked up.'

"I don't know how this story got started.

"We stopped off at a friend's flat when we arrived in the country and flew out to Tenerife and Barcelona for a short break - we deserved it, I think, after finishing the Australian season just a couple of weeks ago.

"We didn't have enough time in London to get arrested."

Cynics might suggest that Messrs Lee and McNamara could be responsible for fuelling the rumour themselves. Budding guitarists, they are part of a group that includes Australian Test player, accomplished vocalist and their friend Michael Bevan.

Last year they cut a couple of records in the studio and played together to small groups.

Lee - a self-taught strummer - has reached the stage where he requires the expertise of a professional teacher to achieve further advancement, and he says the guys would like to start regular gigs some time in the near future. And there's no better way of cultivating the requisite image in the modern rock world than getting into serious trouble, all publicity being good publicity, even when it's bad.

"Nice theory, mate, though I think you left out the bit where we become the biggest thing to emerge out of the Australian music scene since Rolf Harris," quipped Shane, more than capable of matching the flippant line of questioning.

"But it's completely untrue.

"It might look good, though, when they do the feature on us in (music magazine) NME."

When they do features on him in the sports pages, words like prodigious, talented and future star usually feature strongly.

After a successful season with Somerset in the county championship last year - where he amassed a cool 1300 runs at an average of 65, top scoring with 167 not out and plundering 36 wickets along the way - he had an equally productive term Down Under.

Already he has played eight one-day internationals for his country. But like the stars he plays with regularly on the New South Wales team, men like the Waugh brothers, Mark and Steve, Mark Taylor, Michael Bevan, Michael Slater and Glen McGrath, Shane wants to become an integral member of the Australian Test side.

Failing to make the squad this year for the Ashes tour is not viewed by anyone as a major setback.

"I'd like to think that I was fairly close to making the squad, but it's quite tough - they've brought a really strong squad over.

"Boys like Paul Reiffel, who's been in the squad for the last five or six years, missed out.

"It was disappointing to miss out.

"But if I do well here and go back out to Australia and do well, my chances of breaking in will hopefully be good."

The chances of two Lee brothers emulating the Waugh brothers by playing for Australia together could be high too, Shane's brother Brett being a highly-touted prodigy back home.

At 20, he is in the New South Wales squad having been associated with Rodney Marsh's Academy of Sport for the last two years, and he is a genuine quickie with the potential perhaps to outshine his older brother.

"There were always competitive games in the back yard when we were younger, I can tell you," recalled Shane.

"I remember once batting for about three hours - because being older, I obviously got to bat first.

"Brett finally got me out and then I bowled him out first ball and he wasn't very happy about that! I guess he's been trying to get over that ever since." The youngest of the three Lees, Grant, 17, has played for New South Wales at junior level but is not quite as interested in the game as his siblings. This year he has gone to university to study law and commerce and that seems to be the direction his life is headed.

Shane, on the other hand, has taken a year out of university to come to Enfield, having completed two years of a three-year degree in sports psychology.

"I definitely intend to finish my degree but at the moment I'm concentrating on my cricket career," said Shane.

"I play the game hard, I have a beer and I'll have a chat to anyone after the game - that's how Australians play the game of cricket.

"I've always been very competitive and I want to win.

"So every time I'm playing for Enfield I'm going to be looking to win.

"And if I can help the guys technically or just in the way they approach the game, getting the best out of them, that would be the goal.

"I've done a bit of captaincy in a representative side back home and it's a question of finding out how people tick.

"Everybody's different.

"You have to know how to approach people and how to talk to people.

"I guess what I've learned in sports psychology will be beneficial.

"But I think I'm a pretty good judge of character - which helps in all senses."

Testing how good he is at judging a team - he's played only one competitive game yet for Enfield when they defeated Bacup last week - I asked him how he rated his side's chances of doing well.

"We'd like to think we have a chance of winning the league and anything else we play in," he replied. "They're obviously my goals. I'm not coming over here to run mid-table and just make sure I score plenty of runs band take wickets - that's not good enough.

"I've only seen glimpses of how our guys play and I haven't seen any other teams in the league.

"So I'm still a bit up in the air at the moment.

"But I'm sure that if our guys do well and do the basic things right, like generally fielding well, taking the majority of our catches and running hard between the wickets, we will have the basis of a good cricket team.

"I'll definitely be looking to improve those things because they need improving."

So, Shane admits, does his guitar playing - if both improve throughout the summer, Enfield might end up with an end-of-season bash to remember.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.