Richie Benaud: The most influential person in cricket for the past 50 years, says Jim Maxwell

Updated

If cricket had ever anointed a pope it would be Richie Benaud.

He has been the most influential, revered and respected person in the game for 50 years. As Australian captain he never lost a series. As a commentator he was precise, authoritative and deliciously understated.

Richie was the master of the pause. Silence marked him as the best exponent of television's essential craft; let the picture tell the story, then utter appropriate gravitas, a memorably droll bon mot.

If you ran a poll today on the most popular cricket commentator in Australia, Richie would still be number one.

He is immortalised in beige, that prominent lower lip, acute analysis and the 12th man parody recalled by the fan's refrain: two for two hundred and twenty two.

As a commentator he concentrated on the game at hand, rarely dwelt on the past, and was always respectful of the players and their foibles and failures.

A wild slog dismissal was clever bowling, a rank delivery urged a reflective comment, "might have lost his length there."

He played in an era of austerity. In his early years there were no celebrations at the fall of a wicket. It was a game. No one earned any money from playing in the Australian team.

Richie was the first tactile captain, breaking the mould of restraint with enthusiastic enjoyment of the moment.

He was one of many heroes for a young lad at the SCG who was lucky enough to see so many great New South Wales and Australian players like Richie, Neil Harvey, Alan Davidson, Norman O'Neill, Bob Simpson, Brian Booth, Bill Lawry, Graham McKenzie and Wally Grout.

Between the stellar careers of Bill O'Reilly and Shane Warne, Richie was the match-winning wrist spinner. Listening to his around the wicket performance at Manchester in 1961 on a crackling radio reverberates now as much Warne's ball of the century at the same ground in 1993.

I first met and interviewed Richie in 1975 for a program on the 1961 tied Test series and looking back it was a disappointment that he was never asked to work on the ABC TV coverage in those years up to the start of World Series Cricket, which transformed the presentation of the game on television.

My respect and admiration for Richie deepened in the last decade when he was twelfth man at The Primary Club. Every appearance was greeted rapturously by the audience at our various functions, and he gave an ear to all comers who wanted a moment with him at the annual Marathon Cricket matches at the SCG.

Richie was unique. A great all-rounder and leader whose devotion to the game has been phenomenal.

Topics: sport, cricket, sydney-2000, nsw, australia

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