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Family & Relationships Richie Benaud dies

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Just like Greigy, we never got to see/hear him back in the box on last time. RIP. :(
 
It feels like I know him such are the hours I spent in his company. Few can claim the influence he had, be it through his captaincy, and the role he played making cricket fun again, after dull, drab 1950s, or his influence on World Series Cricket. As a commentator he was peerless, and by all accounts he was
similar as a person. The game will never be the same.
 
RIP, one of the most identifiable TV personalities in Australia. The new commentary crew could learn a thing or two in how to conduct commentary.
 
One of the all time greats in regards to service to the sport. His voice was cricket.

His "commentary rules" made him the greatest and set him miles ahead of the current crop of giggling mates.


Richie Benaud's tips for commentating
  • Never ask a statement.

  • Remember the value of the pause.

  • There are no teams in the world called 'we' or 'they'.

  • Avoid cliches and banalities, such as 'he's hit that to the boundary', 'he won't want to get out now', 'of course', 'as you can see on the screen'.

  • The Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought a disaster, and neither bears any relation to a dropped catch.

  • Put your brain into gear before opening your mouth.

  • Concentrate fiercely at all times.

  • Above all, don't take yourself too seriously, and have fun.

Thanks for everything Richie. Legend.
 
SugarShane said:
One of the all time greats in regards to service to the sport. His voice was cricket.

His "commentary rules" made him the greatest and set him miles ahead of the current crop of giggling mates.


Richie Benaud's tips for commentating
  • Never ask a statement.

  • Remember the value of the pause.

  • There are no teams in the world called 'we' or 'they'.

  • Avoid cliches and banalities, such as 'he's hit that to the boundary', 'he won't want to get out now', 'of course', 'as you can see on the screen'.

  • The Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought a disaster, and neither bears any relation to a dropped catch.

  • Put your brain into gear before opening your mouth.

  • Concentrate fiercely at all times.

  • Above all, don't take yourself too seriously, and have fun.

Thanks for everything Richie. Legend.
Click to expand...

Every single current cricket commentator should print these tips off and put them on the wall in their office. They're not a patch on Richie.
 

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SugarShane said:
One of the all time greats in regards to service to the sport. His voice was cricket.

His "commentary rules" made him the greatest and set him miles ahead of the current crop of giggling mates.


Richie Benaud's tips for commentating
  • Never ask a statement.

  • Remember the value of the pause.

  • There are no teams in the world called 'we' or 'they'.

  • Avoid cliches and banalities, such as 'he's hit that to the boundary', 'he won't want to get out now', 'of course', 'as you can see on the screen'.

  • The Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought a disaster, and neither bears any relation to a dropped catch.

  • Put your brain into gear before opening your mouth.

  • Concentrate fiercely at all times.

  • Above all, don't take yourself too seriously, and have fun.

Thanks for everything Richie. Legend.
Click to expand...
Brad MacNamara - please read. Then resign.
 
I hope my self indulgence in re-posting this tribute I wrote on the BF Cricket Board will be excused.

Unlike most on here, I had the privilege of watching Richie play during the last seven years of his career. Until the advent of Warne, he was the best leg spinner I've ever seen. After Richie's retirement. I spent several futile decades seeking his replacement in the Australian team. When I attended Warne's first-ever game for Victoria, at the Junction Oval, it was Richie's bowling with which I compared Warne's. At last, an equal, possibly even a better.

I too appreciated his commentary on cricket. He spoke like the exceptionally well-trained observer he was, like a journalist, a wrangler of words.

My most vivid memory of Richie occurred during an otherwise insignificant game between NSW and Victoria, at the MCG. I think it was the third day of the game. It was during Richie's last season of first-class cricket. Grahame Thomas was constructing a painstaking century. It was quite dull. So much so, that I decided to go home at the tea interval. I lived only a twenty minute train ride from the ground, and I reasoned that I could watch the last couple of hours on ABC TV, which used to televise the last session of each day's play in Shield matches (ah, the days). Imagine my chagrin at having left the ground, as I settled own in front of the TV, only to see Richie smash a century in that session. Damn! Grahame Thomas caught the Richie joie de vivre too, and also hit out to score a 100 himself in the same period. To this day, I've never seen a better session of cricket.

Richie was a spectacularly fierce driver of the ball straight, and it was mostly through this method he dispatched the Victorian bowlers. He was arguably also the best gully fielder Australia ever had. It was in his bowling though where his true genius manifested itself. He wasn't a great turner of the ball, because his delivery arm was quite upright at the point of delivery. His accuracy was the stuff of legend though (that Warne bowled with a much more round-armed action, allowing him to gain prodigious turn without sacrificing accuracy, was what made him an even better bowler than Richie). He had all the tricks from wrong-'un to flipper and top spinner, all delivered with no perceptible change in action.

It was as a captain though that his legacy should be most celebrated. He changed the face of cricket by giving rein to his natural attacking instincts and eschewing the fear of losing. In this he had a superb kindred spirit in Frank Worrell. Cricket as played by English captains prior to this had just about rendered the game moribund and an irrelevant curiosity to most. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that he and Worrell saved cricket. Cricket occasionally throws up beauties like these two, where true sportsmanship is an accurate measure of what it is to be a human being.

Richie occasionally told this story against himself. It involved bowling to Gary Sobers, who was carting him all over the park one day, at the same MCG. Richie related with awe and admiration how Sobers, finding the length of one of Richie's hopeful deliveries to be quite short, stepped back towards his stumps and drove Richie straight over the sight screen for six, off the back foot. That he would relate this as one of his fondest memories of playing cricket says a lot about how much this man gave to the game he loved throughout his life, and what a wickedly subtle sense of humour he possessed. It has been a privilege to share the planet with such a man.
 
I grew up with Richie Benaud. You could feel the vibrations in his voice from the internal orgasms when Shane Warne was bowling well. He was commentating when Warne broke a heap of his leg spin records.

3 people shaped my view of Cricket.

My maths teacher who played in the Australian womens team.

My father (umpire and junior coach) who was Botham mad

and this guy that ended every broadcast.
 

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