Australia is a huge country. Tasmania is a small island in this huge nation. It is not known to produce heroes or stars. So when David Boon came to the national scene and then went on to represent Australia in cricket, the state got its own hero.
David Clarence Boon was born in December 1960 in Tasmania, a state which has not produced too many cricketers. His talent in cricket got noticed at a very young age and as he grew older so did his glory. At the age of just 18 he was involved in one of the greatest victories that the Tasmania state team had ever seen. He gave a stunning performance as Tasmania won the Gillette Cup in 1978, their first ever interstate title.
Five years after his claim to fame at the domestic level, Boon found a place for himself in the national side. He made his debut for Australia in a one-day international against the West Indies in Melbourne in February 1984. David Boon scored 39 in his first ever international inning but Australia failed to get past the Windies as they lost the match by six wickets.
He made his Test debut in November 1984 in a match against the West Indies at Brisbane. A couple of centuries from the West Indies batsmen took the match away from Australia and they lost it by eight wickets. Boon showed some resilience in the second innings as the Aussie batting collapsed and scored a fifty on his debut.
Boon made his mark as a formidable top order batsman on Australia’s Ashes tour of England in 1993. In the ten innings that Boon batted in he made 555 runs at an average of 69.37. He also managed to score his first Test hundred, an unbeaten 164 at Lords’ in the second Test of the series. He had come agonisingly close in the first Test as well when he got out at 93 at Old Trafford. But the disappointment was all forgotten as Boon hit another hundred in the third and fourth Tests.
He represented Australia over a period of 17 years and came to be known as one of the greatest cricketers of all times. There was a time when he started rivalling Allan Border for the position of the all the greatest. He played in 107 Tests and 181 ODIs. With a highest of 200 and an average of 43, he made his mark in the longer version of the game. He also has 21 hundreds and 32 fifties to his name in Test matches. In ODIs he managed a highest of 122 with an average of 37 with five centuries and 37 half-centuries.
David Boon decided to call it quits in 1999. He played his last Test against Sri Lanka in Adelaide in January 1996. Australia emerged victories in Boon’s farewell Test and he managed to score 43 and 35 in the two innings.
His last one-day international was against a team against whom he started his career. At Kingstown against the West Indies in March 1995 was the last time that David Boon represented Australia in an ODI. Australia lost the match and Boon scored just 33.
The grandeur of Boon’s career and his popularity among the fans can be gauged from the fact that the pavilion at the ground in hometown, was rechristened as “The David Boon Stand”. This happened at a time when he was active as a player and was only 31 years old.
After his retirement Boon took up a position in marketing with the Tasmanian Cricket Association. Later he went on to become a selector for the national side, replacing Geoff Marsh in 2000. Boon is still a selector of the Australian side, and could go on to become one of the first full-time selectors Australia had
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