Under The Southern Cross I Stand
Main article: Under the Southern Cross I StandThe team song is "Under the Southern Cross I Stand", which is sung by the players after every victory and "treated with reverential consideration and respect" within the team. The official lyrics are as follows, though when it is sung by the players, the word "little" in the last line is replaced by "bloody" or an expletive.
- Under the Southern Cross I Stand
- A sprig of wattle in my hand,
- A native of my native land,
- Australia you little beauty.
The authorship of this "Under the Southern Cross I Stand" is credited to former wicketkeeper Rod Marsh, who was apparently inspired by Henry Lawson's 1887 poem, "Flag of the Southern Cross". Marsh initially had the role of leading the team in singing it, and on his retirement he passed it on to Allan Border. The other players to have taken on the role are David Boon (when Border took over the captaincy), Ian Healy (on Boon's retirement), Ricky Ponting (on Healy's retirement), Justin Langer (when Ponting took over the captaincy). The role currently belongs to Michael Hussey, who took it on when Langer retired in January 2007.
Read more about this topic: Australia National Cricket Team
Famous quotes containing the words southern, cross and/or stand:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaf and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ in the poplar trees.”
—Billie Holiday [Eleanor Fagan] (1915–1959)
“Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We’re told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
“Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.”
—Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980)