David Boon has been named interim Cricket Australia chair, effective October 28, 2026, succeeding Mike Baird in the role. The appointment means Boon will automatically represent Cricket Australia at the ICC Board, with a meeting scheduled in Bali, Indonesia, later this month.
Boon joined the Cricket Australia Board in February 2025 and now steps into the chair’s position at a moment when the global governing body is conducting a governance review. His elevation brings a profile that is uncommon among cricket administrators: a decorated playing career, a long stint as a national selector and a decade-long tenure as an ICC match referee.
Boon represented Australia in 107 Tests and 181 ODIs between 1984 and 1996, and was part of the 1987 World Cup-winning squad. After retiring from playing, he served as a national team selector from 2000 to 2011 before moving into match officiating, where he presided over more than 400 international matches as an ICC match referee across a decade. He also served as a director of Cricket Tasmania from 2014 to 2025, including a period as chairman of that body.
What does Boon’s background bring to the ICC Board?
Boon arrives at the ICC Board with experience that spans the playing field, the selection room and the referee’s chair, covering areas that sit at the heart of current cricket governance debates. The ICC noted the breadth of that background in its assessment of his appointment.
“Each involves and is influenced by decisions that touch players directly: scheduling, playing conditions, workload and officiating standards. Boon has lived those trade-offs on the field and enforced them from the referee’s chair,” a source said as quoted by Cricbuzz.
His presence at the Board table also coincides with structural changes within the ICC itself, including the formation of a new Franchise Leagues Committee. Former players from several nations now hold positions on the ICC Board, with Tamim Iqbal of Bangladesh, Roger Twose of New Zealand and Rudie van Vuuren of Namibia among those representing their respective member associations as directors or in associate member capacities.
The ICC governance review currently under way makes the composition of the Board a matter of active discussion. Boon’s appointment as CA interim chair gives him a seat at those deliberations at a particularly consequential time.
“With the new Franchise Leagues Committee, chaired by Tamim, and a governance review under way, that experience is a practical asset when balancing imperatives of players, members and franchises – all key stakeholders in Cricket’s expanding ecosystem,” the source added.
Boon’s combined record across playing, selection and officiating roles spanning from 2000 through to 2025 positions him as one of the more experienced former players now involved in cricket’s administrative structures at the international level.
