Bollywood star Brett Lee has today announced that his 20 year dream of being a world class cricketer is over.
The star of the movie UNindian and a 2007 Wiggles episode said that the demands of being required to bowl 4 overs a match on 8 occassions over the summer period was too strenuous.
‘I have been lucky.
Not everyone who excels in their chosen field gets to chase their passion’
Lee, who is best known for being an animal handler in the 1995 movie “Babe“, says that the cricket experiment went on a bit too long.
‘Like Michael Jordan did with basketball, I have clocked my first love acting.
Michael went on to try his hand at Major League Baseball. My equivalent was cricket.
We both failed in that regard.
However, Jordan did get a bronze statue made of him placed outside the Union Center in Chicago.
I got a star placed in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but they misspelled my first name as Bruce”
Lee says that if he put his heart into it, he probably could have been a better bowler.
I initially set out to just be a decent village cricketer who averaged something around 30 with the ball.
You know, like James Anderson.
I almost achieved that I guess.
Lee’s meteoric rise to B grade Bollywood actor and C grade Hindi speaker started through a chance encounter while gigging with his band ‘6 and Out‘.
‘We wrote the song ‘Can’t Bowl Can’t Throw’ in honour of some guy called Scott Muller. I probably played with him but don’t really remember.
Anyhow, lead singer Richard Che Que thought it would be a hit in India if we dropped Warnie’s name in the lyrics.
F**k me, he was right!”
That single was released in 2000.
His meteoric rise to not star in any Bollywood films until 2015 proves categorically how shrewd that strategy was.
When asked how the ‘Can’t Bowl Can’t Throw’ single contributed to Lee being selected for a role in UNindian, director Anupam Sharma said:
‘Can’t Bat Can’t who?
I just wanted a blonde guy to play the lead.
I walked up to a guy who looked suitable in a Sydney supermarket. He was browsing the hair dye aisle.
I had no idea it was Brett Lee and that he was a famous musician at the time.
Someone told me he is bigger than Rick Astley in New Zealand.
How lucky am I!’
Lee says that he is looking forward to auditioning for upcoming Bollywood productions including:
- ‘PK’ – A movie about chewing gum
- ‘Dhoom 3’ – The story of how India, Australia and England took over the ICC
- ‘Chennai Express’ – An Australian fast bowlers journey to play for the Chennai Super Kings
- ‘3 Idiots’ – The true story about Srinivasan, Ravi Shastri and Sunny Gavaskar
- ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ – Brett didn’t know what this one was about because the words don’t appear to be in English
