A Night With Allan Border

Through a cricket playing friend who works in sports marketing over here, we had received word that Allan Border (Australian cricketing legend and on of my childhood heroes...for any non-Aussies reading this) was travelling to New York and was looking for some Yankee tickets for Sunday's game. As it turns out, he was able to get tickets through Mastercard (a sponsor of his) but still, through his representative, had indicated that he was happy to have a drink with us on Saturday night.

I clearly jumped at the chance to do this and so the plan was for us to meet Allan and his family in the lobby of his hotel at 7:30 on Saturday. Two of us were there by 7:15, and two more were on the way, so we were simply waiting and looking for Allan to make an appearance. Deep down, I had not let myself get too excited about this and was kind of thinking that it might not end up happening for some reason. I guess the first sign that I might be a bit of a psycho fan was that I saw a lady walk past and recognized her (from his book) as Allan's wife Jane. I then turned around and there was Allan, standing there looking like he was looking for someone. In somewhat of a surreal moment, I approached, stuck out my hand and said "Hi Allan, my name is David, I am one of the people here to meet you tonight.". Getting a much better response than my "meeting" with Pete Sampras (an arrogant jerk) a few years earlier, he shook my hand, introduced his family and we began chatting.

After all of us had arrived, we discussed the plan for the evening. They were only in New York for a couple of days and did not know their way around the city at all. One of our group suggested a casual French bistro a couple of blocks away and so off we went. Now the initial message was that he would meet us for "drinks", so once it became clear that he was happy to have dinner with us I knew we were in for a much longer evening.

I ended up sitting next to Jane and across from Allan, so I felt like I had a prime position. The dinner conversation was quite fascinating, some cricket related but a lot was just general dinner conversation. He was interested to hear our perspectives since we had lived in the area on 9/11. Also, there was much discussion about differences between Australia and the USA and changes in Australia since we were all last there. Among the cricket topics touched on were David Boon's 52 can beer drinking record from Sydney to London. All true...in fact, apparently, other players in the team were acting as "pace setters" for him, sitting in and drinking a few cans at a good pace to keep him moving. In the end, a ring pull from one of the cans was gold-plated and engraved "52 not out" and presented to Boonie by Allan on the tour. I guess a second sign I was a psycho fan was that when the topic of State of Origin League was being talked about, I reminded him of a promotion he did for Channel 9 in 1985 with Dirk Wellham for this event. He had no memory of having done this but I remember it like it was yesterday. Mindy told me later that I was a little bit "Single White Female-ish" :-).

After a couple of hours, the table was cleared off and we were asked about dessert and coffee. I was assuming that this would be a good time for him to lead things to get wrapped up. Instead, he said "I think I wouldn't mind having another beer". My response was pretty obvious - "I think I'll have one too!". We then all sat and talked for about another hour before feeling the need to leave and give up our table since there was a line waiting to get in at that time.

We walked back to his hotel and chatted in the lobby for a few minutes. I (of course) had brought a picture for him to sign and also had a couple of photos taken with him to mark the occasion. We then said our goodbyes and left - it was, by then 11:15...so we had spent the best part of 4 hours with them all. Anyone who knows me will understand how this truly was a life highlight for me. He and his family could not have been nicer or easier to talk to. Truly, a fantastic night that I will never forget.