In the weeks since the Ashes ended with England losing 1-4 to the Australians, there has been plenty of talk about the drinking culture in the England team. The trigger for this has been visuals of the England team drinking during a break between Tests at Noosa and a damning media report that the team’s Test vice captain (and England’s white ball captain) Harry Brook was involved in an altercation with a nightclub bouncer when the team was in New Zealand just before the Ashes.
The two incidents have led to withering scrutiny of the team’s culture. But it also has brought back memories of the time when former Australian star David Boon apparently guzzled down 52 beers when he was on his way from Australia to England for an Ashes tour in 1989.
Whether Boon actually drank that much alcohol or not is a matter of conjecture now, but some of his Australian teammates like Dean Jones and Geoff Lawson stand by the tale and swear that they were eyewitnesses to what could be the most incredulous half century in Ashes history. Boon, the man in the middle of the folkloric tale himself, initially kept denying that he actually drank 52 beers. Then, eventually he too accepted that he had.
“What I won’t deny is that we had a beer. But to be perfectly honest if it was that many… how the hell would I know?” a sober Boon said in an interview with BackChat Sports Show three years ago.
When asked if Boon was drinking with anyone else or if it was a solo pursuit, said: “Oh, yeah. We had partners throughout.”
David Boon talks about his 52-bber trip for Ashes
“I’ve got to be brutally honest: I won’t deny what happened. We all do stupid things in our life. I’ll finish by just being serious: You have fun, you do something, and then you think, ‘Shit, what about the ramifications to everything else? To your family, to your children, blah blah blah.’ And yeah, it caused some crap over the years. It’s something that I regret a lot. I can’t deny it, but I do regret it. It was stupid to do that when you’re in the public eye,” Boon said before taking a gulp of water for emphasis.
Over a distinguished career for Australia, the Tasmanian with a glorious handlebar moustache scored 7422 runs for Australia in 107 Tests besides also racking up 5964 ODI runs in 181 games. He was also part of the 1987 World Cup winning team before becoming a national selector.
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Boon is not the only ex-Australian cricketer to have folkloric tales of alcohol consumption to his name. Doug Walters is said to have downed 44 beers on a flight to London during the 1977 Ashes series. Another tale is that Rod Marsh downed 45 beers on the way to the 1983 World Cup in England.
While Boon regretted the binge-drinking session, his teammates like Dean Jones and Geoff Lawson have revealed details of how he had left them impressed. Lawson claimed that despite the amount of alcohol that was flowing through Boon’s veins he was able to walk off the plane without a problem.
In an interview he gave to The Telegraph, Lawson corrected the notion that Boon had chugged down 52 beers. The reality, he said, was that Boon was actually downing anything alcoholic he could get his hands on.
“It was a whole lot of different drinks – lots of beer, a few spirits, but I recorded every drink’s alcohol content. I was writing it [Boon’s beverage tally] on the back of a sick bag: the brand, the alcohol content and the volume,’ Lawson told the Telegraph. “One of my biggest regrets of my career is that I’ve written this all down on the back of a white sick bag, but I left it on the plane. It would have been one of the greatest pieces of memorabilia in Australian sporting history.”
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Dean Jones, who is now a pundit, has also spoken about that incident at length. Jones said that that Ashes tour in 1989 was his first one so his father had urged him to sit next to someone with plenty of experience to pick their brains about playing in English conditions.
Dean Jones on David Boon’s 52-beer trip for Ashes
“My father said to me before the 1989 tour, ‘Son, is there anyone you can sit next to on the plane that can tell you all about the final one percent of how to play in England? How do you play at Lord’s with the slope? Why does the ball swing around so much in overcast conditions? How do you play the county matches?’
“I said, ‘Dad, the best guy is Boony (David Boon).’ He said, ‘Well, sit next to him, have a beer, and drain him for every bit of knowledge you can.’ So I did. And two hours outside of Singapore, I found myself finishing my 25th can. I’m as full as a fat lady’s sock. I’m absolutely pissed,” Jones once said.
Jones also said that during the 22-hour journey, which also included a layover, they had a “roster system” on who got to sit with Boon and share a drink.
Jones also finished the tale with a final flourish.
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“Everything was going swimmingly and, of course, 30 minutes outside of landing we hear the captain of the flight announcing: ‘we’re about to land at Heathrow.’ The flight service director then ran upstairs into the cockpit—you could do that back in 1989—and she said, ‘You can’t do it!’
“The captain asked, ‘Why is that?’
“She said, ‘Boon’s on his 49th can; he’s got no chance of beating the record!’ Two minutes later, the captain got back on the air and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just got some advice from Heathrow. We’ve got some traffic problems, so we’re just going to have to do a few loops before we land.’
“And of course, when we finally landed, this wealth of applause came up from downstairs: ‘Oh, Boony, you’re the king! Well done, Boony!’ It was like he’d just done something heroic. And Bob Simpson said, ‘Listen to the camaraderie of the boys! Boon’s won a game of cards, he’s going to have a fantastic tour because this is a fantastic omen for Boony.’ And right after he says that the captain announces, ‘gentlemen, welcome to Heathrow, it’s six degrees outside and I want to wish the Australian cricket team all the best. I know they’ll do very well because David Boon’s just broken the record with 52 cans from Sydney to London.’”
