Auditions for Warner

Apple TV recently released the film Finch starring Tom Hanks. Sadly, the movie is a flawed effort in every aspect. Hanks makes little to no effort to look like the T20 World Cup-winning captain and any references to his record knock of 172 against Zimbabwe have been left on the cutting room floor. Furthermore, there’s a dog and a robot in the movie for some reason, despite no such entities ever appearing in the Australian T20 side under Finch’s leadership.

Nevertheless, the success of the film has seen Apple greenlight a similar biopic about Finch’s white ball opening partner, David Warner.

I was lucky enough to be given access to some of the audition tapes for various Hollywood actors applying for the titular role in Warner

What you’re telling me is that when Steyn delivers that ball, I’ll have a fraction of a second (snaps fingers to demonstrate) to calculate its trajectory, assess its threat level and put into motion our counter-plan?

That’s what you’re telling me? 

Well, okay then. Let’s do it.

Enough is enough. I have had it with this motherfucking fake beard on Joe’s motherfucking face!

Quinton, we have a problem.

Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. You see this sandpaper I’ve got here? This sandpaper was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the first World War. It was bought in a Bunnings in Cannington, Western Australia. Made by the first company to ever make sandpaper. It was bought by off-spinner Ernie Bancroft on the day he set sail for an Ashes tour. It was your great-grandfather’s sandpaper and he used it every day he was on that tour. When he was done, he went home to your great-grandmother, put the sandpaper in an old coffee can, and in that can it stayed until your granddad Dane Bancroft was called upon by his country to go overseas and tour once again…

You bowling to me?

You bowling to me?

Then who the hell else are you bowlin’ to? You bowling to me? Well, I’m the only one on strike. Who the fuck do you think you’re bowling to?

OH, NO, NOT THE LB’S! NOT THE LB’S! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY’RE IN MY PADS!

I have no idea to this day what those two thousand Barmy Army fans were booing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were booing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those boos soared higher and farther than anybody on an Ashes tour dares to dream. It was like some beautiful shitfaced bird flapped into our drab little dressing room and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last Australian in Edgbaston felt loathed.