Cricket’s eight greatest boozers as Ashes star downed 52 beers on airplane to Test match
Cricket was once synonymous with serious boozing but most of the game’s top professionals now wouldn’t dream of getting on the sauce with a Test match on the horizon
The Ashes are upon us as England’s finest head Down Under. But it’s likely no hangovers will be nursed when Brendon McCullum’s men take to the wicket in Perth.
Cricket was once synonymous with serious boozing but most of the game’s top professionals now wouldn’t dream of getting on the sauce with a Test match on the horizon.
But those who came before made legends of themselves with stories of drunken nights and unthinkable records as we take a look at the stars of cricket’s past who loved a drink or two.
Shane Warne
The late, great Shane Warne is truly missed within the cricketing realm. Warne’s spin struck fear into the hearts of opponents in his prime and he was just as formidable with a beer in his hand.
He once admitted to gorging on “10 pints and chicken and chips” every evening during his career and struggled to control his weight at times. “I was the renegade,” he once claimed.
Warne also smoked quite heavily throughout his 22-year Australia career and was pictured in 1997 during The Ashes series with a cigarette in his mouth.
Just one year before he passed away at the age of 52 from a sudden heart attack, Warne admitted: “I liked loud music, I smoked, I drank, and I bowled a bit of leg spin. I don’t have any regrets.”
Freddie Flintoff
One of England’s finest ever players with a bat and ball was also partial to a beer or two. Flintoff will never be forgotten for his impact on the field for his country, nor his rampant partying in the wake of the 2005 Ashes win.
Flintoff was front and centre during the victory parade through London and lapped it up at a drunken Downing Street reception. Another inebriated outing saw Flintoff commandeer a pedalo after a defeat to New Zealand at the disastrous 2007 Cricket World Cup.
“I couldn’t find the oars, so I dragged this pedalo into the water,” Flintoff told Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in 2014. “The next morning I woke up, I was on my bed and, still wet and [with] sand between my toes. It was a real low point.”
Flintoff, who suffered a life-altering crash whilst filming for the BBC hit Top Gear in 2022, is now teetotal after admitting he put his other half through hell with his drinking.
“Looking back, I feel for the missus. She used to get the worst of me,” he wrote in his 2015 memoir. “She didn’t come out and celebrate when we won – that was with the lads – and I’d rock in at five in the morning, stinking and falling over.
“When we lost, she’d see me drowning my sorrows in the corner. And then your career is all over. You can understand why cricketers’ marriages break down. If the shoe was on the other foot, I might have just said, ‘You know what, sod this.'”
Ian Botham
‘Beefy’ is an England icon and he was equally revered for how he handled his alcohol. A 1980s tour of India demonstrated just what sort of leader the former captain was.
When flying to Mumbai from Australia, Botham knew that alcohol would be hard to come by when England landed, but with his thinking cap on the iconic all-rounder came up with a solution.
“We were determined to win the game, but we were equally determined to let our hair down off the field,” he explained, as the team had flown in from Australia, where they experienced a 3-0 series defeat.
“The lack of decent beer on the sub-continent at the time – the situation has improved considerably now – made that difficult, but we took the precaution of importing as much Aussie beer as we could cram into our hold bags on the flight.”
David Boon
Former Australia batsman Boon is the subject of one of cricket’s most iconic drinking tales. During his career, in which he scored over 7,000 Test runs, he made a name for himself thanks to the amber nectar.
The story goes that during a flight from Australia to London as Boon’s team jetted in for the 1989 Ashes, the batter attempted to break the record for the number of beers consumed over the course of such a journey.
A benchmark of 51 cans was supposedly set by Rod Marsh and it was due to stand as the plane approached Heathrow. But according to team-mates, the pilot was asked to circle a few times so Boon could squeeze a few more and he smashed the record with a staggering 52.
“I’ve got to be brutally honest here, I won’t deny it happened… We all do stupid things in our lives,” Boon admitted to the BackChat Sports Show. “You have fun, you do something and then you think ‘s*** what about the ramifications to everything else’, to your family to your children.
“It caused some crap over the years and it’s something that I regret… a lot. I can’t deny it but I do regret it. And I was stupid to be able to do that when you’re in the public eye.”
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Merv Hughes
Hughes was a team-mate of Boon’s and was on the infamous flight when the record was supposedly broken. Speaking to the Guardian in 2002, he was asked if Boon consumed 47 cans.
The bowler replied: “Oh, where did you get that story from? That’s an absolute fabrication of the truth.” But after some comedic silence, he then joked that his peer had downed more than the suggested 52. Hughes said: “It was 53 cans.”
Hughes was also a heavy drinker in his heyday and even once admitted he thought it was his duty to get sauced up, considering who was sponsoring some of Australia’s tours. He added: “Have a think about it, on both the ’89 and ’93 tours of England we were sponsored by [Australian beer brand] XXXX. If you don’t get right behind the sponsor, you get chastised by the Australian Board.
“We were out doing pub nights every night, making personal appearances to promote a beer. Personally, I couldn’t see anything wrong with that. When Paul Reiffel and I didn’t make the ’97 trip, I told him it was a good one to miss because it wasn’t sponsored by a brewery!”
Rod Marsh
Marsh, who died in 2022, was said to be one of the original record-setters for beers consumed before Boon came along and his 51 cans surpassed team-mate Doug Walters’s 44. However, Walters wistfully suggested that neither Marsh’s nor Boon’s records should be counted in 2018 due to their longer flights.
“I think 44 (beers) was my record,” Walters told Fox Cricket. “And Marshy went over and had 45 but as I say, you only set the bar for someone to jump over. Marshy I don’t give the record. I started from Sydney, he started from Melbourne. He went Melbourne to Sydney to London.
“And I don’t give credit to Boony either because he started in Launceston. He went to Launceston, Melbourne and then Sydney to London. We didn’t count the ones we had on ground. We only called those practice sessions, so we were in a pretty good mood by the time we got there.”
Herschelle Gibbs
While celebrating with drinks after a match is usually accepted, doing so before a game is often frowned upon. However, in the case of South African batting legend Gibbs, alcohol seemed to boost his performance.
His famous 175 against Australia in 2006 saw South Africa chase a record 434 in an ODI. Gibbs revealed in his autobiography that he was hungover when he faced the Australian bowlers at The Wanderers in Johannesburg. Despite this, his alcohol-fuelled innings lasted just 111 balls and included 21 fours and seven sixes.
Jesse Ryder
The formidable New Zealand batsman was involved in multiple alcohol-related incidents. In 2008, his season ended when he injured his hand while trying to break into a toilet at a Christchurch bar the day after the Black Caps’ one-day series victory over England.
It was later revealed that Ryder had been drinking until 1:30am before the match. Another drinking session in the West Indies caused Ryder to miss a team meeting and training session that day, leading to his removal from the next game.
