On November 25, 2010 — his 26th birthday — Australian fast bowler Peter Siddle took a hat-trick in the first Ashes Test at the Gabba, dismissing Alastair Cook, Matt Prior, and Stuart Broad in consecutive deliveries. It was a remarkable feat, the kind of thing cricketers dream about. But the fact that made the story truly memorable, the detail that elevated it from "impressive sporting achievement" to "one of cricket's most discussed stories," was Siddle's diet.
Siddle was a committed vegan who famously ate up to 20 bananas a day. Twenty. Bananas. A. Day. While his teammates celebrated with beer and champagne — as is the sacred Australian custom for any achievement, no matter how minor — Siddle's post-hat-trick celebration reportedly involved bananas. The image of an Australian fast bowler celebrating an Ashes hat-trick with fruit instead of a cold one was so incongruous that it became the story. It was like finding out that a rock star celebrated a platinum album by drinking camomile tea and going to bed at nine.
The Australian media, accustomed to cricketers celebrating with alcohol and the kind of post-match revelry that would make a fraternity proud, didn't quite know what to do with a vegan fast bowler. The banana anecdote took on a life of its own, with jokes about Siddle being part-monkey, supermarkets running out of bananas in his vicinity, and nutritionists debating whether 20 bananas a day was genius, madness, or both.
Siddle took it all in good humor, and "20 bananas a day" became his calling card, the first fact mentioned in every interview and profile for the rest of his career. He proved you could bowl at 140 km/h while powered entirely by fruit — a sentence that has never been true of any other professional athlete before or since.