RIP Rod Marsh

[pete]

One of the greats. Sadly passed away aged 74. Here's a good interview from 2010.

https://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/455385/-you-never-forget-things-you-ve-worked-out-yourself

[Hesi]

Looked through the many and varied photos of him, and this is how I best remember him, the brash no nonsense Aussie cricketer

Interested in Lightning's thoughts on him

 

[mardigras]

From memory, he was involved in the underarm incident. And I think he was very opposed to it happening. 

[pete]

A really good obituary in the Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/04/rod-marsh-the-baggy-green-brigadier-and-keeper-of-australian-test-cricket-culture

[Hesi]

2 hours ago, mardigras said:

From memory, he was involved in the underarm incident. And I think he was very opposed to it happening. 

Just had a look at it, he was shaking his head saying no.  Richie Benaud was extremely severe in his condemnation

[pete]

He was no angel. Virtually destroyed Kim Hughes' test career in cahoots with Lillee and the Chapelli Brothers.

[Lightning Blue]

5 hours ago, Hesi said:

Looked through the many and varied photos of him, and this is how I best remember him, the brash no nonsense Aussie cricketer

Interested in Lightning's thoughts on him

 

A true character of the game . Not pushed around by authority so always stuck to his guns.

And stuck to his Beer as well, with the 45 Cans consumed in one session while in flight form Aus to London adds to his resume' lol....

[Gordy]

I think that was David Boon that consumed 45 cans on that flight L.B., but I stand corrected.

Rod Marsh never gave his wicket away easily especially when the team was in trouble.

[pete]

14 minutes ago, Gordy said:

I think that was David Boon that consumed 45 cans on that flight L.B., but I stand corrected.

Rod Marsh never gave his wicket away easily especially when the team was in trouble.

Like many of the era, Marsh was partial to a “malt sandwich” or three… or 43 (the flight to England in 1977) or 45 (en route to the 1983 World Cup). Such excesses may have impacted his batting – he averaged 33 in the first half of his career, 19 in the second – but his keeping got better in leaps and bounds.

[pete]

14 minutes ago, Gordy said:

I think that was David Boon that consumed 45 cans on that flight L.B., but I stand corrected.

Rod Marsh never gave his wicket away easily especially when the team was in trouble.

I think Boony broke the record 52 in 1989.

Which is mind boggling.

[pete]

Boon started off slowly, accompanied by Merv Hughes and Mark Taylor (to be fair, all three had imposing physiques). Dean Jones joined in soon. None of the three kept a count — but Jones did. “Boonie had plenty of advice for me as we had just left Singapore and we had just finished our 22nd can of beer,” Jones later told Australian Paper.

All this had to be done with utmost caution, for neither Border nor Bobby Simpson nor Lawrie Sawle (Chairman of Selectors) would have approved had they got an air of the goings-on. This was an era when Border and Simpson were trying to get the team out of the idea (to quote Steve Waugh) that hamburgers were not healthy just because it had lettuce in it. There was more to fitness than that.

Jones fell asleep on the top deck (where Simpson and Sawle were seated) soon after the flight took off. Geoff Lawson, meanwhile, had been keeping a score on sick-bags. Hughes, Geoff Marsh, Tom Moody, and Carl Rackemann gave Boon moral support from what The Age called “the non-striker’s end”.

Jones claimed that he woke up, confused, amidst the deafening sound of the entire crew and passengers applauding. He told The Age: “Hearing all the boisterous applause, Bob Simpson thought someone had won a big card game and explained to Laurie Sawle that he’d collected a similar kitty while making the 1964 journey to England.”

The captain had just announced on the public announcement system that Boon had gone past Marsh’s and Walters’ 44. The attendants confirmed the count as 52 cans of Victoria Bitter beers.

Hughes, however, insists the count is wrong. “That’s an absolute fabrication of the truth. It was 53 cans,” he told The Guardian.

Simpson was not amused. Jones tried to convince him to send the Tasmanian home and have him at No. 3 instead. Somehow the coach was not convinced. He tried to ensure the incident did not get public, but by the time he put a curfew on his team, Hughes had already informed a few radio stations.

Boon did not stop there. The team attended the press conference; the Australian media (thankfully) did not ask Boon questions. The team then attended a cocktail party hosted by XXXX (the sponsors) when Boon downed three more cans (rumours are that he had another couple at Sydney before the flight had taken off). He then went into a 36-hour slumber and missed two practice sessions.

How much did he drink?

The cans were not pint-sized. They measured a tinny’ or a stubby’, in other words, 375-ml cans. If we go by the 52-can count, that amounts to 19.5 litres of beer. That seems absurd even if we think water.

Additionally, if one goes by the 4.6% ABV, then Boon consumed 897 ml of pure, undiluted, unadulterated alcohol in the space of 24 hours. National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) recommends about a third of that per week.

Dr Donald Curran admonished the act in an article in Medical Journal of Australia later that year: “With the inevitably shorter flights to London, the next record breaker may arrive dead’ on time ... It is well-known that alcohol can have very serious toxic effects on heart muscle resulting in cardiac arrest.”

What about the man?

The most surprising aspect of Boon’s feat is the silence of the man himself on the incident: “Never spoke about it, never will,” were his only words to Weekend Australian Magazine. “We played our cricket in an era where blokes learned never to let the truth get in the way of a good story,” were the words he reserved for Fox Sports.

What followed?

- Boon later became brand ambassador of VB.

- Boon’s feat was dwarfed by baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs in January 2015 during a cross-country flight in USA. He consumed 107 beers in a day.

Brief scores:

David Boon 52