Walters and Marsh set the standard
It also needs to be set in its proper context that Boon was only following in a tradition laid down by his forebears starting with the 1973 tour of the West Indies. Australia won the series 2-0 and on the flight back from the Caribbean to Sydney, Doug Walters reckoned he could consume more than 30 beers on the 30-hour flight, a theory that encountered a significant problem when the plane ran out of booze.
Nevertheless, a challenge had been set, and there was no shortage of volunteers to take it on in a hard-drinking, uber-competitive Australian changing room. Walters set the bar at 44 on the way to the 1977 Ashes, but his good mate Rod Marsh was determined to better that, which the great wicketkeeper did en route to the 1983 World Cup in England, which was witnessed by Lawson, a fast bowler who played through the 1980s for Australia.
“In those days you were on the jumbo jet, you could actually get in the service elevator and go down into the storage area where you’re surrounded by cool-room beer, so you’re out of everybody’s way,” Lawson says. “It was a different world back then, you could happily sit in the cockpit with the pilot as well.”
Marsh’s actual total would have been far higher, but the rules only permitted drinks consumed on the flight. “Rod started drinking in the Qantas Lounge in Melbourne, but we didn’t count those, that’s just a warm-up,” Lawson says. “We didn’t count the ones he had in Singapore for a stopover either.”
As the plane started its descent into London, the captain announced that Marsh had consumed his 45th beer, precipitating wild celebrations, although many accounts suggest he was force-fed the last couple of drinks. “Rod was a bit worse for wear when we touched down,” Lawson says. “We used to land at 6am, but you had to stay up, or else you get jet-lagged. We went for a run, and then had a round of golf. It was a long day and by the time we got back to the Waldorf at 7pm we were exhausted. But there was Rod at the bar, with a pint in hand, fresh as a daisy.”
Enter Boon. He made his test debut in 1984 against the West Indies and flourished as an opening batsman before dropping to No 3 for the Ashes tour in 1989. The culture within Australian cricket was changing by this point. The dreaded words “strength and conditioning” had entered the vernacular and the puritanical Bob Simpson had taken over as head coach. Hard drinking was no longer encouraged but frowned upon.
Nevertheless, Boon wanted to surpass Marsh, his great friend and moustachioed kindred spirit, and word soon spread that he was taking on the challenge. To pass the 50 barrier, Boon would need to consume a drink every 30 minutes of a 26-hour flight, not including the stopover in Singapore.
Like domestiques supporting the Tour de France yellow-jersey leader, team-mates arranged to pace him at various points, but Lawson was a constant presence, meticulously noting the attempt. “I was writing it on the back of a sick bag: the brand, the alcohol content and the volume,” Lawson says. “It was a whole lot of different drinks – lots of beer, a few spirits, but I recorded every drink’s alcohol content. 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.”
Alas, the missing sick bag will have to assume the cricketing status of the lost library of Alexandria, but Lawson is unequivocal that he had witnessed Boon consume “52 distinct drinks”.
‘It wasn’t seen as a big deal’
By one calculation, this translates to Boon consuming 89.7 units of alcohol – or more than six times the NHS’s recommended weekly limit. “Obviously Boonie liked a drink but, honestly, he never really got p*****, especially when we were on tour,” Lawson says.
Here, recollections start to diverge significantly. Some witnesses claim the record was again announced by the captain to mass cheering and that Boon had to be carried off the plane. This is disputed by Lawson. “There was no song and dance about it,” Lawson says. “It wasn’t seen as a big deal. It was just a fun thing of ‘oh, you broke Rod’s record, let’s win the Ashes now’.” He is adamant that Boon walked off the plane under his own steam and any levels of inebriation remained undetected by management.
You may question whether Lawson – nicknamed “Henry” after the Australian poet – is a reliable witness in this matter. Unlike other team-mates who had helped pace Boon, Lawson was teetotal during his career.
“People often say you must have had a hard time in the Australian Test side, but I really didn’t,” Lawson says. “I can remember before the first Test in Brisbane in New Zealand and Rod Marsh comes up to me and says, ‘Do you want a drink?’ I said, ‘I think I’ll have a tomato juice’. Rod says, ‘You have to have a beer’. I said, ‘No, I don’t drink’. He bought a beer, put it on the bar, but I didn’t touch it. After a while, Doug said to him, ‘Rod, Henry doesn’t drink, so we’ll get him a soft drink’. And that was it. After that, they wouldn’t let me buy a drink. Little did they know that soft drinks cost the same as a beer. The only peer pressure was only ever about winning cricket and doing your best.”
Word had started to leak about Boon’s exploits via various pointed references during interviews to Australia already bringing up their first 50 not out. Still, according to Lawson’s account, management remained oblivious until a warm-up match against Somerset at Taunton. “We had a fines meeting – usual stuff for being late or messing up in practice – we were raising money for an end-of-tour dinner to give to a local charity,” Lawson says. “Boony got fined 52p. Simmo was like, ‘What’s this? Why 52p?’ He had no idea. So someone said that’s because of Boonie’s record. And he was like ‘What record?’ You know, the 52 beers.”
Simpson was not impressed, but it had little effect on either Boon or the team dynamic. Australia were given little chance of regaining the urn coming into the series having lost the previous two Ashes. They duly won 4-0, regaining the Ashes in England for the first time in 55 years, thus setting in train 16 years of Australian dominance.
“We played just about flawless cricket, going there as underdogs,” Lawson says. “We would have won 6-0 but for two thunderstorms. England surprisingly were not that competitive.”
Boon averaged more in the 1989 series with the bat (55.25) than his other illustrious number and scored the series-winning runs in the fourth Test at Old Trafford, sweeping Nick Cook for four. Boon would soon assume the role of England’s nemesis, plundering more than 1,000 runs in the next two Ashes as Australia’s leading scorer in each series.
There were more technically accomplished Australian cricketers, but few aside from maybe Shane Warne were more beloved Down Under than “Boonie”. That was captured in a TV sketch The Oz Brothers, where two beer-bellied brothers worship at the altar of Boonie the buddha. Clearly his accomplishments at the crease massively outweigh how much alcohol he consumed on a particular flight, but his legacy will always be entwined by those strands; if anything it only amplified his everyman appeal. He later became a brand ambassador for Victoria Bitter.
It is also a record that has never been cleared and likely never will be because of a combination of quicker flights, higher ABV beers and the presence of nutritionists. Rugby World Cup winner Mike Tindall once had a crack but fell short of the 50 barrier (whether or not this coincided with the genesis of R360 has yet to be determined).
“No one who ever knew Boonie or even saw him play would remember him as anything other than a first-class bloke and even better cricketer,” Lawson says, “but the 52 not out will always be folklore.”
