But what happens when you don't even recognise the music that is supposed be your own country's national anthem?

The South African women's hockey team looked perplexed ahead of their match against Great Britain in West London on Tuesday when the apartheid anthem, Die Stem, was played instead of Nkosi Sikekel' iAfrika.

The organisers of the Investec London Cup were left red-faced after questions were asked how they played a cut of an anthem that has not been played since the early 1990s.

The organisers said they had outsourced the job of looking after national flags and anthems ahead of matches to a private contractor.

CEO of Great Britain Hockey Sally Munday apologised to the South African team and supporters via her association's website yesterday.

"Standard procedure would be to check anthems to be played with visiting teams in advance. However, on this occasion that did not happen and Great Britain Hockey accepts full responsibility," she said. "Great Britain Hockey and its contractor appreciate the sensitive nature of this unfortunate mistake and we apologise unreservedly for the offence caused."

SA Hockey Association CEO Marissa Langeni said : "We have received the apology and a phone call from [Munday] herself and we're happy with [ it] and we've put [the matter] to bed.".

The following are some of the biggest national anthem blunders in recent TV history:

Christina Aguilera couldn't have chosen a worse time to mess up her national anthem rendition - during the 2011 Super Bowl, which is watched by an estimated 111 million people. Instead of singing: "O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming," Aguilera was heard singing: "What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleamin".

Steven Tyler, who is paid millions to judge would-be stars on American Idols, remembered the lyrics but sounded like he was being throttled. He waved his hands as if he was drowning as he sang the Star Spangled Banner at an NFL game between the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens earlier this year.

South Africans were horrified when Ras Dumisani butchered the national anthem ahead of a Springbok rugby match against the French in 2009. He blamed the sound system then.

Embarrassingly, he went on a radio show and attempted to sing an acoustic version - surprisingly managing to sound even worse, mangling the words and sounding as if he had forgotten to take his throat lozenges.

Ard Matthews could have called upon auto-tune if he was worried about going off-key while performing at the Supersport studios ahead of the announcement of the Springbok World Cup squad last year. So horrible was Matthews - he even chuckled during the performance - that parliament's portfolio committee on sports and recreation summoned the broadcaster and the SA Rugby Union to a meeting to explain the debacle.