As team building exercises go, Monday night's event in Leeds for the South African cricket side was, colourful, to say the least.
There was Jacques Kallis as a hotdog, Hashim Amla as a baby, Jacques Rudolph as Flash, Morne Morkel as, erm, 'Bones' and most impressively JP Duminy as a nurse.
It was all part of more team building, engineered by the squad's performance director Paddy Upton. It was an exercise in “visual improvisation theatre” according to Upton. That may be it's formal name, in a more casual sense, it was a fancy dress party and everyone participated.
Duminy certainly entered into the spirit of the evening in a tight nurse's costume including silver wig, mini skirt stockings but no high heels.
Asked about a possible future in the profession after retirement, he replied this morning: “No look I'll pass on that one, the boys had a good fun time there was lots of fun and games, it was a good night,“ said Duminy.
Each player was given an introduction into improvisation theatre before they chose their own outfits for the evening.
The players had plenty of fun tweeting from the function on Monday night, with AB de Villiers –'Shadow' – asking his followers to try and identify the cricketer behind the costume.
Robin Peterson, who, depending on your perspective was either the devil or a red cow, tweeted about Duminy: “Ladies and gentleman say hi to Mrs JP Duminy. lol!!! always had my doubts.”
There was the more serious business of a strenuous training session at Headingley on Monday morning, where the Hotdog (Kallis) and the Baby (Amla) were also reminded of their responsibilities as top sportsmen after being picked for drug testing. Amla is of course fasting – today being a non-playing day – and there were some light hearted concerns about whether he would be able to produce a urine sample, fortunately all seemed to end well.
The team were joined after training by Graeme Smith who has just returned from Cape Town, after his wife Morgan gave birth to a baby girl last Wednesday.
The second Test against England starts at Headingley on Thursday.