Six months of toil for Brett Lee reaped enormous dividends when he bowled himself into Australia's Test side with a five-wicket haul against the England Lions at Worcester.

On crutches for six months at the start of the year after undergoing surgery to repair bone spurs in his left ankle, Lee proved his critics wrong with his best performance with the ball for Australia since the tour of the West Indies in 2008.

In a massive for fillip for both Lee and Australia, the 32-year-old speedster was deadly with the weapon the English used to destroy the tourists four years ago - reverse swing.

Lee finished the day with the figures of 5-53, all but one of his wickets not being the result of late swing.

"When the ball's tailing in, it's pretty hard to get the ball out of my hands," Lee said.

"I enjoy bowling with it. You always feel like you're a chance of getting a wicket with it."

"It doesn't matter if the batsman's set. When the ball's coming back in you always feel like you're coming back into the game as a fast bowler."

It has been a rocky road back to fitness for Lee, who played his first international match since surgery in May against Pakistan.

Torched by the Windies and Sri Lanka during the ICC World Twenty20, Lee has improved steadily with each spell in Australia's two lead-up matches to the first VB Tour of England Test starting in Cardiff next Wednesday.

"I haven't trained for 25 weeks to sit on the sidelines," he said.

Lee said he had focused on getting extra miles into his legs at training in order to be hardened for the Ashes even if it meant short-term pain in the middle.

"So I've been going into game feeling more tired and lethargic, also keeping in mind the Test matches that are coming up," he said.

Former West Indies great Michael Holding, commentating on Sky Sports, said he was impressed by Lee's performance.

"He kept on running in, he bowled the fastest ball of the match so far and he has bowled some very, very quick spells," Holding said.

More importantly, Holding said, Lee - who was clocked bowling regularly around the 150kmh mark - managed to extract reverse swing.

"It's good to have pace but if the ball is going straight down the pitch it's not going to do a great deal against good batsmen," he said.

"You've got to get the ball to do something, whether through the air or the surface of the pitch. He certainly got the ball to reverse swing and created some havoc."

Lions batsman Stephen Moore, who made 120, said he had rarely encountered such late swing during his six-year county career.

"The key ingredient for him is bowling up at that 93mph (149kmh) and even Mitchell Johnson, Stuart Clark were bowling at the late 80s (mph) weren't getting it to dip in as much as that," he said.

"Having chatted to some of the guys that know their stuff it seems like that extra three miles per hour really makes the difference."