Shane Lee and The Crazy Gang
Chris Muldoon | July 12, 2023
The CricConnect cricket community will have noticed that Shane Lee has been wielding the pen of late like an SS Jumbo attached to an aeroplane propeller.
And he has been hitting a few in the middle with his unique journalistic style.
So I was more than delighted to be given the opportunity to respond to Shane on behalf of the many subjects and cricketing colleagues he has written about in recent weeks.
Shane Lee and The Crazy Gang
Fans of English soccer might remember Wimbledon FC was known as The Crazy Gang back in the 1980s and 90s, as it successfully climbed from 4th to 1st Division with a motley crew of players with a unique and irreverent approach to the game.
Mosman Cricket Club in the mid-1990s wasn’t quite in the same league but it but it did have a broad spectrum of personalities and talents who came together as part of a well-funded recruiting blitz. Players from many corners of Sydney were encouraged to join the club as it aimed to end a long-time stint as a competition cellar dweller.
Coming to the club were familiar Grade stalwarts like D. Gilchrist, M. Goeke, R. Younan and G. Small as well as bigger names (and bodies) like Martin Haywood, Phil Alley and Craig Hughes, and even a fresh-faced Brett Lee joined the charge, as did Messrs. Adlam and T. Johnstone a little later.
But at the start, the big recruit was Shane Lee. He was on the cusp of Australian selection, there were high expectations, and the club immediately appointed him First XI captain and charged him with bringing a new level of professionalism and competitiveness to the playing group. He performed extremely well from the get-go, was a great captain, trained hard and was big on recovery, including enormous amounts of rest.
The Club had pretty good success too, including finishing runner-up in First Grade in 1996-97, while individually it was during this time that Shane and his brother Brett first played for Australia.
But it was off the field that Shane and many of his Mosman colleagues really excelled. It was a close-knit group of cricketers, with the usual mix of athletes, nerds, lover boys and fruitcakes found at most Grade cricket clubs. Shane broadened his leadership responsibilities to include the club’s social life and there is no doubt he was a gelling influence.
It was only a few years later that Shane and I began sharing an apartment at Cremorne Point. Shane was at the tail-end of his cricket career and transitioning to what we’d call a normal life. Our own lives at the time were somewhat mis-matched, I was working corporate life, and he was still a full-time cricketer.
His weekend usually started on Sunday night, when mine was winding down. He and his cricket cohorts were Sunday night specialists. The Woolloomooloo Bay, Kitty O’Shea’s and St Pats was the circuit of choice and then, like clockwork, Shane would bumble in the front door about 1.00am Monday morning closely followed by a rag tag bunch of revellers who often looked like they worked at the local carnival. They were keen to keep the party going. Unfortunately, our landlord also happened to be our neighbour, and he’d normally pop his head in the door about 2.00am with a ruddy face screaming at Shane that he had to move out the next day. I simply got into the habit of dropping an apology note in our landlord’s letterbox as I headed out to work each Monday morning. Although we did get very close to being evicted the morning after Shane played ‘There’s Only One Tony Lockett’ on repeat for three hours late into the night after a big day at the Sydney Swans.
I convinced a reluctant Shane one Friday night before a Grade match in the late-1990s to come see Oasis, who were in town and playing at the Enmore. We settled into the left forward pocket at the Enmore and it wasn’t long before Shane was in full flight – he was more Champagne Supernova than tomorrow’s first over. But it was the next morning where I caught a glimpse of Shane as he hurried out the door and noticed his hair was a weird yellow colour. We later found out that another punter at the Enmore had thrown bright yellow food dye in his hair. He subsequently spent the day running around Mosman Oval looking like a giant budgerigar – he was charging into bowl with what looked like a WACA helmet on his head. It was awesome, and I think only a small price to pay for seeing Liam and Noel at the height of their powers.
During and after my time as a player at Mosman I wrote cricket reports for Mosman Daily newspaper, in which I would regularly take the opportunity to invent quotes for Shane, such as ‘I enjoyed Saturday’s game at Hurstville Oval – the afternoon tea was plentiful, and the canteen queue moved at a pace quick enough for my liking’. I’d often then walk into our house on Wednesday evening and he’d have the newly-published Mosman Daily open in front of him with steam coming out of his ears. He’d shout things like, ‘I am trying to establish a career as a serious international cricketer – I can’t be seen to be waffling on about bullshit like this in the media’. Whatever Shane.
Not many people would also know that there is a rule for Australian cricketers which is informally known as the Shane Lee Rule and relates to the rest time required for any player invited to join the Australian team mid-tour. Anyway, the genesis of this rule is a 24-hour bender that Shane completed at the end of one season in the late 1990s. We’d been out in the eastern suburbs celebrating a no-commitment weekend before heading home and falling into a deep slumber, which was broken not long after when the home phone started ringing crazily off the hook– eventually I took the call to find it was Australian Chairman of Selectors Trevor Hohns looking for Shane, who I eventually woke. Shane took the call reluctantly and next thing you know he’d cancelled lunch at the Bellevue and was on a plane to the sub-continent to join the Australian team. I went back to bed, and it seemed like only a few hours after we’d had our last drink that I turned on the TV to see Shane bowling in some cricket match overseas - at least he was bowling for a short time until he started walking in wobble boots before ultimately collapsing on all-fours at the top of his mark. My immediate thoughts were - no shit, 24 hours on Oxford Street will do that to you. Apparently, he was dehydrated, which led to the change in rules regarding length of time players were required to rest after a long flight. It’s informally known as the Shane Lee Rule, but I would argue that the Shane Lee Rule should actually read – ‘Don’t drink hard piss on Oxford Street for 24 hours just prior to joining a cricket tour on the sub-continent’.
Shane was asked to run in the Olympic Torch Relay in the lead up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I am surprised he agreed to it because Shane doesn’t like to run for anything, but he was to complete the Wollongong leg as one of the city’s favourite sons. Anyway, one day I noticed the relay invitation floating around the house so I rang the organisers and told them I was Shane Lee and that my uniform for the relay should be size Medium. Sure enough the Medium outfit arrived and, of course, it fitted Shane like a hot dog skin. Shane was dumbfounded - hadn’t the organisers been watching the One-Dayers on TV? Hadn’t they seen his arse looking like two tractor tyres squeezed into those iconic canary yellow pants?
In typical Australian fashion, Shane’s Mosman cricket friends would try to bring him down a peg or two as his international career progressed. One of our personally satisfying acts was to leave messages on his mobile whilst he was on the field playing for Australia. For example, when Sri Lanka were playing Australia the following message was left on his phone - ‘Hello Shane, this is Arjuna Ranatunga, I have left my trousers back at the hotel, could I borrow a pair of yours?’ So, so schoolboy, but also very satisfying as we pictured Shane checking his phone post-game.
Shane retired from cricket at the ripe old age of 29. He was ready for the next stage of his life – and although his cricketing life might have seemed a little on the hedonistic side, he always kept his eye on the prize. Shane negotiated rather than completed the last few subjects of his degree at Wollongong Uni and he headed out into the business world.
If you haven’t seen Shane out and about in the last 20 or so years, you’re not going out for lunch enough.
In fact, he has parlayed his love for lunching into a business. Shane has a podcast called Lunch With Lee, which I must say is pretty good and showcases his skills as a raconteur and media performer.
Catch Shane’s podcast or look out for him next time you are out to lunch.
