Test match wins are special and cricket has seen the most wildest of celebrations but beat this. What began as an idea to perform the Australian team song ended with Australian batting legend Matthew Hayden nude on top of a cable car climbing to the top the Table Mountain!
Australia had won the first Test against South Africa in the beautiful city of Cape Town in 2006. Australian players were celebrating in the Newlands dressing room and were a couple of beer down. It was time for them to sing the traditional Under the Southern Cross I Stand anthem and the team’s official choir master Justin Langer was planning a special singing session.
What followed is revealed by Adam Gilchrist, a key member of that side, in a report from news.com.au. Excerpts from Gilchrist’s account of that incident:
“Ricky and Justin started to get a little creative about where we sang the song. We were all sitting in the change rooms waiting, wondering, ‘When is this song going to happen?’”
“Justin calls it because he’s in control. Hours went by until about 11pm he organises us into a bus and we get driven up to the base of Table Mountain in Cape Town and they’d somehow conjured the guy who runs the cable car up to the top of the mountain to somehow allow us to take it up to the top to sing the song looking out over the city. Everyone who’s been there knows it’s stunning.”
“The players file into the cable car and it begins its climb to the top of the 1,086m above sea level summit near the Lion’s Head at the western end of the famous mountain.”
While everyone was pumped up, Hayden thought something was still missing and went on to add more spice to the whole thing. Hayden stripped down naked and opening the manhole latch cut into the roof of the car. Hayden was at the roof with the Australian flag draped around his shoulders and Gilchrist says that sight would have been a frightening experience for even the wildlife up there. He also said that Hayden reckons that moment was one of the highlights of his career.
Gilchrist adds, “It was a little bit breezy and chilly when we went up the top and everyone knows the result of what that can do to a gentleman. And the thing is, it wouldn’t matter if it was 5C or 2C, Matthew Hayden is always going to look like he’s nude in cold weather.”
Explaining the episode as Hayden’s Leonardo Di Caprio’s Titanic’s “I’m the king of the world” moment. Gillchrist said, “Think Leonardo DiCaprio, stylish, classy, a lustful figure for the ladies in that role, and then think Matty Hayden naked pretending to be that and it probably doesn’t have the same effect.”
“It wouldn’t have been a pleasant sight. Fortunately, there was no one up there who would have seen him like that. But we didn’t realise that our wives and partners had been driven up there ahead of us. We managed to get a little bit of clothing on him before we stepped off to greet them.”
In the end it was a memorable signing experience and that wasn’t the end of it. Australia’s happy outings continued as they sealed the series 3-0.
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