Brett Lee took a career-best 5-30 to demolish the West Indies before announcing: "I'm back."

For 29-year-old Lee, who had not taken a five-wicket haul in four years, it was a watershed moment.

He is now officially an "impact" player, free to bowl fast and lively in four-over spells, and any talk about dropping his pace to bowl line and length and be patient has gone out the window.

"Today, I just worked on getting the ball through to Gilly (wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist)," Lee said.

"My biggest asset is pace, that's the reason I'm in the Australian cricket team, so I'm not going to be going out there and trying to bowl at 135-140kph line and length. I need to bowl fast.

"Confidence is everything and five wickets in a Test match, it's what you dream about.

"It's been pretty well documented in the past couple of days through the press but it has been a while. Four seasons, I think since I've taken a five-for, but there were two seasons when I was not playing Test cricket.

"But I'm back now. I feel confident and hopefully I can use this as a platform to repeat that performance.

"I think my role is definitely to be more of an impact bowler. I'm ideally suited to bowl four-over spells. I think it's a hard task to bowl 150kph more than that no matter how fit you are."

After Lee took an unconvincing 1-59 in the West Indies first innings of 210, he had a heart-to-heart with skipper Ricky Ponting, who told him just to bowl fast.

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