One of the fastest bowlers in cricket history has made an starring in a romantic comedy.

The film UnIndian was shot in Sydney and will open across 300 screens on the cricket-mad sub-continent after a red-carpet premiere on 19 August.

Australian cricket legend Brett Lee plays an English teacher who falls in love with a single mother played by Bollywood star Tanishtha Chatterjee.

Lee - who is hugely popular in India 

"On the cricket field I'm totally different on the field to what I am off the field," Lee said.

"It came naturally to be in front of the camera."

Bride and prejudice

In the film, Chatterjee plays a divorced single mother with a career whose family want her to find "a nice Indian man".

Instead she meets Lee's character, who may be nice but is definitely not Indian.

"She's an absolute sweetheart to work with, a consummate professional," Lee said.

"Very, very funny when the camera's not rolling. Very, very funny when the camera is rolling."

The Bollywood star even coached the former Test cricketer through the film's bedroom scenes.

"It's embarrassing but she made me feel very comfortable and it was done in a very tasteful way," Lee said.

Although tame by western standards, the sequence was re-edited at the request of India's censorship board.

A letter from the board requests for the: "Sex scene to be shortened and toned down, especially removing the sideways visual and end climactic shot."

It was a restriction that frustrated the director, who points out that India was the country that gave the world the Kama Sutra.

"In India, censorship is just ornamental," Anupam Sharma said.

It's a topic that makes Lee appear to choose his words carefully.

He said: "I think the best way to answer that is we did shoot it as an Australian film and it was shot by an Indian producer and director Mr Anupam Sharma who does live in Australia. The lead actress is Indian. So, I guess I'll leave it at that."