After Cricket
Boon was formerly a member of the Cricket Australia selection board, along with Merv Hughes, Andrew Hilditch and the newly appointed Jamie Cox. In May 2011 it was announced that Boon would be standing down from his position on the selection board, and as general manager of Cricket Tasmania, to become an ICC match referee, replacing Alan Hurst on the ICC Elite Panel. He made his test début as a match referee on 1 September 2011 in a one-off test between Zimbabwe and Pakistan at Bulawayo.
Nicknamed 'Boony', the stocky, moustached batsman became something of a cult figure for his colourful character.
He was famously idolised by the ABC comedy show The Late Show in a segment called The Oz Brothers. Played by Santo Cilauro and Rob Sitch, Gavin and Neville Oz were quintessential Aussie cricket fans who would face Launceston and pray to Boon, chanting "Legend... Legend... Dead-set legend".
In recent times, he became the face of Victoria Bitter (VB) beer for its 2005/06 & 2006/07 summer advertising campaigns, called "Boonanza". Part of the promotion was the sale of a talking David Boon figurine with purchases of beer, which would make comments when prompted by Channel Nine commentary. One health expert claimed it was a "..a dog-whistle marketing strategy directed at the heavy-drinking, sporting public that says, 'Go for it'." He is also alleged to have once consumed 52 cans of beer on a flight from Sydney to London in 1989, in a story that is considered by some to be part of Australian sporting legend. This has never been confirmed by Boon however though Geoff Lawson did confirm it
Boon made his return to cricket at the major sporting events Titans of Cricket in October 2011 - an evening of exciting challenging for famous sportsmen, touring across the UK in Manchester and Birmingham, with the grand finale in London's O2 Arena.
Read more about this topic: David Boon
Famous quotes containing the word cricket:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)