Brett Lee - renowned for his intimidating fast bowling - couldn't scare the world's lowest ranked cricket side.

Sharp and fast, Lee was the pick of the Australian bowlers, helping the world champions rip through the Bangladesh side for just 97 runs.

At stumps on day one, Australia was 2-121 in reply.

Lee grabbed 3-23 - two clean bowled - at Darwin's Marrara Oval, but the fiery pace bowler was gracious towards the Bangladeshi side.

"The way that the guys played the short ball - there's been heaps of talk in the media saying that they can't play the short ball," he said.

"But I thought they played quite well.

"They certainly got behind me. They didn't look scared out there, which is great.

"It's Test match cricket, it's pretty hard stuff out there, so I thought the batsmen did a great job today."

Lee said he didn't know what to expect of the Bangladeshi team.

"There's been heaps of stuff in the paper about them, but we tried to maintain the focus about what we could actually do out there and that was to go out there and play some pretty positive cricket."

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