The wild criticism of Glenn Maxwell’s drunken tomfoolery shows how much the world has changed | David Penberthy

David Boon was lauded for sinking 52 tinnies on a Sydney to London flight in 1989. The reaction to Glenn Maxwell’s recent drunken antics shows how much the world has changed.

It feels like only yesterday it was 1989. In a news sense it was quite the year.

The Berlin Wall was torn down signalling the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War.

F.W. de Klerk was elected president of South Africa on the promise of dismantling apartheid.

The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska causing the largest oil spill in human history.

Arguably bigger than all of that, David Boon drank 52 cans of beer on a Sydney to London flight ahead of the Ashes.

It might only be a short stroll from 1989 but in 2024 the “news” this week about Glenn Maxwell’s drunken antics stands as a depressing testament to the swift and absolute rise of wowserism in this once-knockabout nation.

HAVE YOUR SAY IN THE COMMENTS BELOW

Cricket was once played by men to give them something to do during occasional bouts of sobriety.

Dennis Lillee recounts in his autobiography the tale of how the entire team rallied around the late great Rod Marsh as he tried to set a new in-flight beer can drinking record in the early 1980s.

Doug Walters was a great batsman and larrikin who was famous for observing any rare, cheap dismissal by casually returning to the pavilion and choofing on the remainder of his already-lit cigarette and resuming his card game.

For several years Walters was the holder of the Sydney-London title with an impressive 44 cans.

He set the record in 1977 and it was on the 1983 tour that Marshy decided to have a crack at breaking it.

He went one better with 45 cans, even though the last tinnie had to be tipped down his throat by his teammates as our beloved wicketkeeper had lost his faculties.

Australian cricket legend David Boon was feted with he put away 52 tins of beer on a Sydney to London flight in 1989.

Modern-day cricket great Glenn Maxwell, on the other hand, was pilloried for having a few too many after a golf day in Adelaide last week. Picture: Facebook

It would be another six years until D. Boon went eight cans better with an effort for the ages, one that will probably stand forever more.

I am sure some people will read all this and think how appallingly juvenile it all is, and harrumph about the appalling example these men were setting in their capacity as role models.

(Role models being anointed thus on account of their ability to hit or catch a leather ball, apparently.)

The sad truth is these miserable people have now officially won. The no-fun brigade are in the ascendancy and the rest of us had better straighten up.

A generation ago everyone would be having a quiet laugh about Glenn Maxwell doing a number on himself at an Adelaide pub and winding up in hospital in desperate need of a lie down.

In 2024, however, Maxwell is probably destined for a supportive conversation with Cricket Australia’s people and culture unit about whether his lifestyle choices are manifesting themselves in negative behaviours which offend the principles of wellness.

It is no longer possible to explain an injury acquired by falling off a golf cart by merely asserting that you were drunk.

And that, you know, when you get drunk, dumb stuff happens, as if that of itself provides a logical and unchallengeable explanation.

Glenn Maxwell was at The Gov last Friday with a group of Australian cricketers watching Brett Lee’s band Six and Out. Picture: Facebook

Being more a product of 1989 than 2024, I would cut Glenn Maxwell slack on several fronts.

The first is to say this. If I ever had to attend a gig featuring Brett Lee’s band Six and Out, I would first drink myself into a coma in preparation.

The second is to ask whether Maxwell is perhaps cursed by his nickname, The Big Show, as being lumbered with such a moniker suggests you’re not going to arrive at the pub for a quiet glass of riesling before calling it a night.

The third is to ask a more fundamental question, namely whether a grown man who is very good at his day job isn’t allowed to have the odd rowdy blowout without it becoming news, or the stuff of behind-the-scenes tut-tutting at Cricket Australia, taking time out from their schedule of fretting impertinently about whether our national holiday is on the wrong date.

As I alluded to before, the idea that any of these blokes are role models is total garbage.

They’re just athletes, and like any group of people, they are also entitled to do whatever they like in their down time provided no one is getting hurt.

If Glenn Maxwell wants to go bananas on the turps celebrating a victory, as the great Travis Head did with such gusto after last year’s World Cup win, good luck to him.

Penbo says Maxwell should be more than entitled to “go bananas on the turps” if no one is getting hurt. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

And, having mentioned Travis Head, this knockabout chap from Adelaide’s outer northern suburbs seems our greatest hope of keeping some of that 1970s spirit alive, with the porn star mo’ and the studied indifference to all the straighteners and narcs who want the rest of the world to behave in accordance with their joyless convictions.

The reason the Boonie record will stand forever more is that there’s an army of worriers and a pernickety press on permanent stand by to tut-tut at the first sign of ratbaggery.

That part of the Australian make-up is not so much under threat but officially gone.

As we reflect this weekend of who we are, the words of Clive James seem more redolent than ever, namely that Australia fancies itself a nation of convicts, when in fact we are a nation of prison guards.

Our love of rules and preparedness to toe the line is more pronounced than ever before.

And while Cricket Australia might have boycotted that match last year with Afghanistan on account of the Taliban, the mad mullahs now running Kabul would applaud our new stringency on the grog, being as they are the ultimate arbiters of the po-faced assertion that you don’t need to drink to have a good time, and that you should never have a good time anyway.