– 5 – WORLD SERIES CRICKET

‘This is easily the biggest challenge I’ve faced in my business life. It is a delightful, delicious, bitter challenge.’

— Richie Benaud, November 1977

DAVID HILL

David Hill was the original executive producer of World Series Cricket, part of Kerry Packer’s key WSC ‘inner circle’ that also included Richie, the entrepreneurial media identities John Cornell and Austin Robertson, and senior Nine Network figures Sam Chisholm and Lynton Taylor. As the founder and head of Nine’s Wide World of Sports in Australia, and later with Sky Television in the UK and then Fox Sports in the US, David built an envied reputation as the supreme innovator and storyteller in global sports broadcasting. Rupert Murdoch has described him as ‘a dynamic and imaginative leader who changed the experience of nearly all major sports on three continents’.

THE VERY FIRST TIME I met Richie Benaud, I lost the power of speech. My mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. It was like being in the presence of an immortal.

My dad revered Richie Benaud as much as he disliked Bob Menzies.

Richiebenaud, it was always one word, was Australia’s handsome, tough, fearless, smart, canny cricket captain — shirt open, bowling sizzling leg-breaks to confused Pommy batsmen, square-cutting to the boundary for the winning runs, diving to take a fingertip catch in the gully.

He stood for honesty, integrity, mateship, ingenuity, toughness — you name it. He exuded confidence, leadership and, at the same time, a wry, self-deprecating sense of humour.

He once said, ‘The hallmark of a great captain is the ability to win the toss — at the right time!’ He commanded a god-like figure in the Hill house in South Turramurra.

It was September 1977. Sam Chisholm and Kerry Packer had asked me to become the executive producer of the Nine Network’s coverage of World Series Cricket. Sam was no fool. He could see the potential for a cataclysmic disaster and clearly he didn’t want any of his people being hurled into the outer darkness by an apoplectic Kerry, so I became the television equivalent of cannon fodder.

World Series Cricket was put together seemingly in minutes. The world’s top cricketers were hired in secret to play a three-way series, which would be televised by Kerry’s Nine Network.

Kerry, with eminent sense, approached Richie Benaud to become his strategic adviser in its creation and also the lead television commentator.

That meant, with Richie, World Series Cricket got his indefatigable wife Daphne — a born diplomat, problem solver, lateral thinker and blessed with a tinkling laugh that smoothed over any potential disasters. There were plenty of those.

All the staff, including Kerry, turned to Richie or to Daphne for advice and often for instruction. I always felt Richie never got the credit he deserved; his mind was in everything and was everywhere. He loved the concept; he loved that cricketers were getting (finally) a fair deal; he loved the fact cricket was front and centre in everyone’s mind.

It was an amazing time of undisguised fear and loathing. Everything changed: rules, uniforms, grounds, pitches, balls, competition structure and marketing. And with that came court cases, universal disdain. Former friends were given the cold shoulder. Through everything, all the turmoil, the shouting, the angst, Richie Benaud was, well, Richie Benaud.

So there I am, meeting the Great Man, making like a goldfish. Wearing jeans, T-shirt, woolly hair (it was the 1970s, folks!) — and here was Richie Benaud, Mr Cricket, looking, well, elegant. Hair: immaculate. Blazer: immaculate. Shirt and tie: immaculate. Shoes: immaculate. Slacks: knife crease, immaculate.

The first meeting did not go well.

Kerry wanted me to produce cricket like it had never been seen and his partner in WSC, John Cornell, had some amazing ideas. Richie, who was BBC through and through, was keen, but cautious. And there was me, whose lack of cricket knowledge was profound, but I had worked with, and for, some amazing people in Melbourne, so I did know a bit about television.

So, away we went.

The first season was tough for Richie and me: getting to know each other, working together hand in glove, and Richie spending a lot of time enclosed with Kerry Packer, Lynton Taylor and John Cornell, solving all the enormous logistic, legal and financial problems of WSC. Which, by the way, was far from a smash hit in its first year. I just had to worry about the television coverage, but because that was so entwined with everything else in the project, I’d get roped in as well.

Live television isn’t for the faint of heart, and there’s no time for pondering.

It’s fair to say that Richie and I finished the first season a long way from the state of armed détente with which we started, him as Mr BBC, and me as a rank amateur.

We ended that first season actually liking each other.

The reason was that we had effectively turned cricket coverage on its head and, despite the angry and anguished letters to the editor from retired clergymen and colonels, the punters — especially those under 60 — were really starting to enjoy and engage.

And I had learned a lot about Richie.

First, he was incredibly smart. Second, he loved cricket, cricketers, cricketing lore, and despised (maybe too strong a word) the blazerati he saw impeding the game. He was incredibly driven in writing about and communicating the game. And he was, at heart, incredibly curious.

I suddenly found myself immersed in this cricketing world. The television crew, the commentators and the teams travelled together, and stayed in the same hotels, so it was all cricket, all the time. And when someone would drone on about the game, as we walked away Richie would love quoting words he attributed to WG Grace: ‘Those who know nothing else but cricket, know nothing.’

That first season started a 40-year friendship between Richie and me.

He taught me cricket, he taught me patience, he taught me strategy, he taught me diplomacy (well, some), he showed me wisdom, and there hasn’t been a day when something he told me hasn’t been useful.

Our day would start with a meeting in the commentary box, when I’d make up the commentators’ roster. Actually the roster was the first real conflict. I need to explain that. Richie didn’t have to say anything to let you know he was seriously pissed off. He would lift his head, turn, look at you, and raise an eyebrow.

Trust me, doesn’t sound like much, but it could be, and was, devastating. Tradition had it that commentators’ shifts were 40 minutes long. Start at 11 through to 11.40; 11.40 through to 12.20; then 12.20 through to lunch at 1 — and so on.

And that’s the way I’d draw up the roster, until I started noticing that around 25 minutes in, if the game wasn’t blazing hot, the commentary became, well, fairly ordinary. Especially in the session between tea and stumps, with a couple of spinners on, it would get positively turgid. Zzzzz. So I shortened the shifts to 30 minutes: 11 to 11.30, 11.30 to 12, and so on. And in keeping with the cricketing world, I used the commentators’ initials. So a roster would read FS Trueman and WM Lawry, AW Greig and IM Chappell, and so on.

Richie didn’t have a middle initial, so I gave him one: X. So he would appear as RX Benaud, linked with, say, WAL Cozier.

From memory, the X appeared on the first roster with the 30-minute shifts.

Consternation. The lift. The turn. The eyebrow raise.

‘What the bloody hell is this? And what’s with the X?’

I looked up from where I was working out the opening sequence for when we went on air and said, ‘I didn’t want people knowing you came from a poor family and couldn’t afford a middle name.’ Face of stone for three seconds. Roar of laughter.

‘RX Benaud at your service, Mr Hill.’

Not a word about the shift change, until we were walking out at the end of the day and he didn’t look around, just said, ‘Worked quite well, the 30-minute shifts.’ And that was that.

He was a dream to work with.

Best cricket commentator ever, and possibly even better in front of a live camera.

The first year of WSC we had two directors: John Crilly — a Perth boy and mate of John Cornell and ‘Ocker’ Robertson — and Brian C. Morelli from Sydney. Both, by the way, world class. John decided to head back to the quokkas after the first season, so then ‘BC’ (as he was universally known) took over.

Our coverage developed with the three of us sitting at the end of the day’s production, always with a chilled adult beverage, doing a post-mortem of sorts but most of the time playing ‘what if?’

Why don’t we try this?

How about boring out a stump and sticking a radio mike in it? Holy shit. Can we? Why not? What about using a computer to score? How about putting the score in the corner when the batsmen are running to show the score ticking up? Why don’t we do a box with the bowler and the batsman’s head?

Hey, let’s give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, we’ll ditch it.

The three of us developed a shorthand, which meant we could do very complicated production sequences with limited resources, in limited time, because we knew what the others were thinking.

Getting ‘Greigy’ (AW Greig, former England captain) to do the pitch reports was a bit of an effort because he didn’t want to do them in the beginning. I convinced him that he’d become a star (which he did) and because I always felt putting the viewer into the state of mind that they were at the ground was vitally important. It all became part of the legend of Channel Nine’s cricket coverage, like the hats, which were introduced when a friend of my wife died of skin cancer. They were worn as a warning to the children of Australia. Ironic, isn’t it, that Rich came down with skin cancer because he never wore a cap when he was playing.

So Richie would be sitting in the corner of the commentary box long before we went on air, hammering away first at a portable typewriter, and then the early word processors, which became the first primitive laptops. He was inordinately proud of his technical prowess and would proudly show off his latest piece of technical equipment that would enable him to write his columns for papers around the world. With his numerous daily deadlines, especially during an Ashes series, he had got himself a watch with an alarm. I know, primitive, but back then — WOW! So this alarm would go off and Richie would dive into action.

With his on-camera work, as with everything else, he was the ultimate professional. Nothing on teleprompt, no scripts, all in his head. I’d figure out a running order, tell BC, pass the sheet to Rich. He’d grab scorecards from statistician Irving Rosenwater (that’s a story in itself ), sit in front of the camera, and just do it better than anyone.

And he always kept his cool.

One day, Richie had just started on air, and suddenly the backing with the Nine Wide World of Sports logo toppled forward, whacking him in the back of his head. Crash!

He didn’t miss a beat. He leaned backwards and, by tensing his neck, pushed the backing upright. While all this was going on, BC was rolling in the fall of wickets and Richie was describing exactly what had happened on the field, and then the alarm went off — probably signifying a column was due for the Lower Murrumbidgee Annual, or perhaps the Upper Rawalpindi Weekly.

He didn’t miss a beat. Continuing his description of the morning play, he reached over to turn off the watch alarm while continuing his pressure on the arrant backing. And threw to the commercial break. Just perfect.

He was very proud of his journalistic background, and the skills he learned at the Sydney Sun showed through his innumerable newspaper columns and the 14 books he wrote.

I’d started as a copyboy at The Daily Telegraph, and had been fortunate enough to work with celebrated police roundsman Ced Culbert as a cadet journalist. Richie and I spent a lot of time talking about the characters, and the crooks, on both sides of the law, that we knew from reporting in that knockabout period of Sydney’s history.

It’s hard to imagine now, in this age of high-priced sports stars, but back then cricketers, even those as stratospherically famous as Richie Benaud, had to have a job that paid them a living wage, and allowed them time off to represent their state and country.

Cricket players traditionally had been parsimoniously paid, which turned on the cricket authorities when the long-simmering resentment boiled over in the revolt that became World Series Cricket. His innate understanding of the media from those early days as a journo made his move into radio and television seamless.

Always a thinker, Richie had stayed behind in London after the 1956 Ashes tour and went to a three-week commentators’ course at the BBC. I guess that move sums up Richie’s attitude to life. Plan ahead. It’s what made him such a great aggressive captain. Here he is, a young cricketer, 26, on the verge of greatness, and he understands his career is not going to last forever, but his love of the game is such that he wants to spend the rest of his life involved. The way to do it is to become — at some stage in the future — a commentator.

Richie’s training there, plus his communications skills, created the legend. We’d often talk about the great sports announcers, and the two we always settled on were both BBC men: Henry Longhurst with golf and Dan Maskell with tennis.

I suspect Richie borrowed ‘marvellous’, which became his commentary signature, from Maskell, who was renowned, after a 40-stroke rally between Björn Borg and John McEnroe in a Wimbledon final, for uttering that one word. ‘Marvellous’.

But the BBC training did create a little niggle in our relationship.

I wanted the commentators to educate as well as inform. I had played cricket growing up (not at all well) and had a vague idea where the various positions were. I had no real idea about the captain’s strategy. I wanted the commentators to explain all and everything. I’ll give you an example. A player fielding at square-leg suddenly gets moved to fine-leg. I say to the commentator (unnamed) — why did so and so do that? ‘Bloody obvious,’ comes the reply.

Well, life’s not like that, and most people’s knowledge is superficial. The more you know about a sport, the more you anticipate and the more you enjoy.

So there was a period where there was some give and take, but we got there in the end. The time there was massive eye-rolling came when I rang my mum (South Turramurra again) and said, ‘What do you think?’

‘Darling,’ she replied, ‘I’ve looked really hard, but for the life of me I can’t see any gully in the field, and they keep talking about it.’

So I superimposed the various fielding positions on the screen for a while, but it just got too hard. When that period of the production ended all the guys breathed a sigh of relief.

Richie’s understanding of the game was such that he could ‘see’ what was going to happen and could sense the outcome of a match. The classic was an Australia v New Zealand one-day international, February 1981 at the MCG, with GS Chappell captaining the home side.

With about 15 overs to go, New Zealand batting, Richie walked to my production desk and said: ‘I think Greg has got his sums absolutely wrong.’

‘Huh?’ I replied.

‘The way I see it, Trevor [Chappell] will be bowling the final over the way it’s going and I don’t think Greg’s going to realise until too late.’

And that’s precisely what happened — and led to Trevor bowling the final ball to Brian McKechnie underarm, to prevent the Kiwi hitting a six off the last ball to tie the match.

Ian Chappell (brother of Greg and Trevor) was on the air and involuntarily came out with: ‘Greg, no, you can’t do that.’ We all watched in horror.

The aftermath is well documented, but the point is that Richie saw something coming well before the rest of us mortals.

He was born in the hard-scrabble town of Penrith. The family ended up at Parramatta, where he went to Parramatta High and started playing first grade with the Cumberland club at 16.

What I couldn’t, and still can’t, get my head around is how Richard Benaud went from the tough streets of Parramatta to become the elegant Richie Benaud, who could, and did, mix happily and effortlessly with every strata of society, from the British royal family to the bloke who cleaned out the commentary box at the WACA.

Richie’s friendships were legendary, a collection of some of the most interesting people I have ever met. It was a privilege to be on the outer circle of Richie’s social world.

He and Daphne ran their calendar virtually years ahead, pencilling in dinners, lunches, stays at country homes. Everywhere they went, they were surrounded by a huge wall of old friendships.

I worked closely with Kerry Packer for many years, and Richie was one of the few people whom Kerry deeply respected, admired and had deep affection.

World Series Cricket was a triumph, and the warring sides made up. I continued working with Richie on Nine’s cricket coverage until Kerry sold the network to Alan Bond. I left for London and Rupert Murdoch’s exciting dream of starting a satellite television service in Britain called Sky. But by then we had transformed the coverage of cricket, and BC Morelli, Richie and I were justifiably proud of what we’d done, realising of course that without Kerry urging us on to think differently, and to be bold and audacious in the coverage, and always put the viewer first, we would never have achieved what we did.

But that didn’t end my friendship with Richie. He and Daphne were always part of my life and my family’s life. And that’s how I’d like to end this story, because something happened last year that sums him up perfectly.

My ex-wife, Lachie Hill, also became fast friends with Richie and Daphne. They would always attend her Christmas party. Our son Julian met and married a wonderful Mexican lass, Maria de Lourdes Milano Ordonez. She is as beautiful as her name.

Jules brought Lou back to Australia ( Jules is working on the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro) and gladly greets Daphne and Rich when they arrive at his mother’s party.

He introduces Lou to them.

I’m talking to Jules a couple of days later and he says, ‘Guess what happened? Richie sat down with Lou and spent an hour patiently explaining cricket to her. Afterwards, I said to Lou, “Do you realise that you have been taught the game by the world’s greatest cricket legend?”’

‘Was she appreciative?’ I asked.

‘Not only was she,’ Jules said, ‘I think she now gets cricket.’

And that little interchange with my daughter-in-law — to whom cricket was as familiar as the dark side of the moon — sums up the man. His passion for the game, his wonderful heart, his innate humanity, made him sit down in the middle of a swirling Melbourne Christmas party and spend an hour patiently explaining the game that was his life to a total stranger to the game.

Just as a footnote. Through the years I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some remarkably gifted on-camera talent and commentators.

John Madden, the American football commentator, explained the job to me this way. ‘It’s telling people what they’re seeing, but not seeing.’ Perfect. And Richie Benaud did that for cricket better than anyone has or, I suspect, will.

BRIAN C. MORELLI

Brian Morelli was there at the very beginning of television in Australia, working as a cameraman for TCN-9 in Sydney in 1956. By 1977, he was a senior director at Nine when he was co-opted onto the network’s coverage of World Series Cricket. With David Hill and Richie Benaud, he would revolutionise the way cricket was broadcast. Today, Hill describes Brian simply as ‘the legendary director’.

I HAD JUST COMPLETED the new season of Channel Nine’s 1977 promotional film entitled ‘Still the One’. At the time, Nine’s CEO was Sam Chisholm, who in his inimitable way congratulated me on the job done with a return flight to anywhere in the world I wanted to go. I chose London. It was suggested that while there I might like to look at ‘some cricket’. At this time, the secrecy surrounding World Series Cricket was firmly in place so I had no idea why I was given that suggestion. As a station director, I was required to tackle anything from ballet to battleships, but I had no clue as to what the significance of ‘some cricket’ would eventually mean.

Soon, I would meet David Hill, ex-Melbourne ABC and Channel Seven, who had just been employed by Channel Nine. David would be WSC’s executive producer. ‘Creative’ isn’t enough to describe Hilly, as he was known. ‘Genius’ is probably more appropriate.

The birth of World Series Cricket brought together David Hill and Richie Benaud. I really don’t know whether we joined Richie … or Richie joined us. However, the birthright of the baby ‘some cricket’ couldn’t possibly have belonged to two better people than Hilly and Richie. They would raise it to majestic heights.

In the beginning, from my perspective, a quiet respect existed between the two of them. Richie, the consummate BBC broadcaster, golfing enthusiast, reporter and former Australian cricket captain. Hilly, a producer of sport stories, sports newsreader and an enigma who had not, in my view, been recognised for his true ability. Through the production corridors of Channel Nine, he was a breath of fresh air. Both were writers who possessed a great sense of humour. What they eventually developed with Nine’s cricket coverage was achieved with some parry and thrust.

Take an early exchange, when a highlights package had to be compiled after our first game at Melbourne’s Waverley Park. A producer would normally write an opening speech for the presenter to read. Hilly duly wrote such a piece and handed it to Richie.

Richie read it slowly, paused, looked up at David and very politely said, ‘I can’t say that.’

‘Why not?’ Hilly enquired.

‘I wasn’t at that game,’ said Richie.

David gently took the script from Richie’s hands and tore it up.

There were many ways Richie could have answered the ‘why not’ question; it was the quiet humour in his answer that impressed us. The foundation for a camaraderie and a working relationship that never wavered was established. In the end, David’s faith in Richie was such that he was using him in more than just Nine’s cricket coverage. In 1985, for example, Richie was co-opted onto Nine’s coverage of the ‘Australian Skins’ event — featuring Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Tom Watson and Seve Ballesteros — which was played at his home course, the Australian. Hilly set up this huge tent, within which was a massive canvas onto which had been painted all 18 holes. Richie’s task was to stand in the appropriate position on the canvas and explain the difficulties the golfers would be facing with particular shots. He did so impeccably.

That Benaud humour was sometimes dry, sometimes forceful, sometimes sublime. In Adelaide, during a game involving the West Indies, Richie was to do a preamble on the condition of the pitch, still covered with canvas tarpaulins as there had been some overnight rain. The day had dawned fine, with a clear sky and typical Adelaide heat building.

On the road, it was not unusual for the travelling television crew and cricket teams to reside in the same hotel and it was the case for this game. West Indies teams, it can be said, always attracted a large following. In his way, Richie summed up the entire situation in a single sentence: the weather during the night, the state of the pitch, the coming heat and the pace of the Windies’ bowlers.

‘I can tell you there was a lot of sweating under the covers last night.’

During a lull in the same game, on what became a dull pitch, Hilly called for us to show characters in the crowd. I chose hats as the theme. Richie was asked to offer some observations. As the cameras panned around the crowd, he contacted us on the intercom that linked the commentators and the outside broadcast van: ‘That fellow in the deerstalker hat, could I see him again? I think I know him.’

At the end of the over, I said, ‘Here we go, Rich, roll tape.’ A complicated sequence of pictures that included the ‘deerstalker man’ was then put to air, with that particular bloke holding stage longer than any of the spectators featured. This was done deliberately, to allow Richie to make comment. But there was a deathly silence. Eventually, we returned to the game.

‘Thanks BC,’ Richie called down the line. ‘Never saw him before in my life.’

There was a brevity to Richie’s commentary that was sometimes astounding. It was exemplified in an Australia v West Indies one-dayer, played at a time when the Australians, captained by Allan Border during his early tenure in that capacity, were being overpowered by the Windies. In this game, boundaries were scarce and the Aussies were taking chances with their running between the wickets. But perilous attempts at singles resulted in a couple of run-outs. The required run-rate was increasing, the Australian batsmen were under enormous pressure.

There was a change of commentators, and almost immediately a stroke was played into a gap in the offside field … there was a series of exchanges between the batsmen … ‘Yes!’, ‘No!’ and the odd ‘Maybe?’ … and, finally, off they went. Then there was a screeching halt by one, a screeching acceleration by the other, as the Windies fieldsman closed on the ball. All of this was caught dramatically by the cameras.

In a situation such as this, a commentator might become breathless as he seeks to describe everything that is happening. But there was no vocal accompaniment to this excitement … until Richie chipped in just as the fieldsman reached the ball, before he grasped it to throw to the bowler’s end.

‘Oh no, not again.’

It was brilliant commentary. A range of emotions — tension, expectation, achievement and doubt — all experienced in milliseconds of time, were captured in those four words. The ball smashed into the ‘furniture’. Another run-out.

One day, Richie asked me via the intercom if we could retrieve footage from soon after a particular batsman had come to the crease. He asked to see the fifth ball delivered to the player in question, from the fourth over of the day. Confirmation of it being ready was followed by a second request, ‘Could you get the sixth ball of the 12th over?’ Then Richie asked for the two items to be played together. ‘Editing done, Richie, ready to go,’ I said.

I heard nothing more, until a number of overs later when he asked if the footage of the two deliveries was still available. It was. A couple of balls later, the batsman was dismissed and Richie immediately asked for the two earlier deliveries to be played, followed by the dismissal. His commentary ran along the following lines: ‘This is the fifth ball he faced in the fourth over … this is the final delivery of the 12th over … and this [as viewers see the replay of the dismissal] is the third time he made the same mistake today.’

Richie could read a game as no other. His timing on other matters was equally impeccable. I remember many times when a story surfaced around a Saturday or a Sunday game and the press, radio and TV journalists ran riot with opinions. Richie, a columnist himself, wouldn’t rush to offer an opinion. He would wait until after all the shouting and the tumult died down and perhaps even a week later would offer a measured view. I have no doubt that most times the public would remember Richie’s verdict ahead of the myriad earlier versions. During my years covering the game there were so many times when incidents arose, dismissals were challenged or ethics came under the spotlight, and afterwards cricketers and cricket officials would ask, ‘What did Richie say?’

One such instance concerned the MCG’s old Southern Stand. There was a time when, to maximise seating capacity, the ground authorities told us our cameras had to be located at the back of the grandstands. They didn’t want paying spectators having their view impeded by television equipment. ‘Your cameras have zoom lenses,’ they told us, ‘so it doesn’t matter where they’re placed.’ The Southern Stand, built in the 1930s, had a semi-circle of posts from ground to roof. During a Test match, Richie was describing the significance of how a captain had set his field and requested we pan across all the fieldsman, from one side of the ground to the other. When the cameraman had finished his job, Richie declared: ‘I’m sorry, but one fieldsman I wanted to show you is behind that post.’

As soon as he could, Richie contacted me on the intercom to ask, ‘Why was the camera behind the post?’

I explained our orders from the ground authorities. This was happening only a couple of seasons after the truce had been negotiated between World Series Cricket and the Australian Cricket Board. The board’s head office was in Melbourne and its ancestral home was the MCG, so we were treading lightly.

‘Really?’ asked Richie. ‘Can you give me the picture again?’

This time, as the camera struck the same hurdle, he fired the full broadside. ‘The reason I can’t show you the fieldsman I want to show,’ he said sternly, ‘is because the authorities have told us to put our cameras behind the posts. Extraordinary.’

When we arrived the next morning, the cameras had been repositioned. Overnight, our outside broadcast engineers had been advised they could bring their cameras forward so the vision would not be impeded by the posts.

No other commentator of my experience could have achieved the same result.

CLIVE LLOYD

Clive Lloyd was a powerful batsman who scored 7515 runs in 110 Tests. Under his captaincy the West Indies became the most successful side in world cricket, at one stage boasting a run of 27 Tests without defeat. Players such as Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall made them nigh on unbeatable … to say nothing of Lloyd himself. He was a key figure at the start of World Series Cricket.

WHEN WORLD SERIES CRICKET began, the perception was that the top cricketers around the world were climbing over each other to be involved. It is true that we were all unhappy that the great commercial success that cricket was having at the time was not reflected in the money we were paid. We felt hard done by. But when the decision had to be made — should we go with an untried concept? — there was a lot of pressure.

The cricket establishment did not let go easily and we all had to weigh up whether it was worth the risk that our international careers might end, especially if Kerry Packer’s dream did not work. But when it came to the crunch there was one element of the new cricket venture that made the difference.

The fact Richie Benaud was heavily involved in World Series Cricket was the clincher. His very presence encouraged a lot of people to join; he was a figure respected by all the players. We knew that if Richie was involved, he would have considered every detail of the new concept. His getting on board was a vote of confidence in it, and that spread to all of us as we took the plunge.

Richie knew how important the whole thing was, firstly as a means of getting a fair day’s pay for elite cricketers, but also as a means of shaking up a game that was in need of shaking up. I recall the great tennis player Arthur Ashe saying to a few players at the Centenary Test in Melbourne in 1977 that, with so many people flocking to the game, we all must have been making a fortune. In fact, we were making a comparative pittance. We all owe Richie a debt, because he had something to say about that.

People trusted Richie. We knew there was nobody who knew more about the game than he did. Many young men coming into the game about that time tried to emulate him … tried to carry themselves as Richie and Frank Worrell did. Richie was an excellent soul, very even-handed and considered, and he had so many friends in so many countries. When all is said and done, this is the camaraderie of cricket, and how it should be.

I saw quite a bit of Richie after my playing days ended. Whenever we were in Sydney we would have a meal at Coogee with Rich and Daphne. When we were there for the 2015 World Cup, Richie was too ill, so it was just Daphne who came out with us. It was a great disappointment not to have been able to have dinner with him one last time. He was the epitome of what a sportsman should be.

JOHN CURTAIN

John Curtain was team manager at the North Melbourne football club in the 1970s when AFL legend Ron Barassi was coach. He was also heavily involved in the establishment of World Series Cricket and has been a continuing Swans devotee, serving for a time as the club’s interim CEO. John got to know the Benauds on both sides of the world and revelled in their company.

WHEN WORLD SERIES CRICKET was being born in 1977, I had the grand title of ‘General Manager, Administration’. I worked off seven sheets of paper, which at that time was about all there was to the whole concept. In those circumstances, you tend to find the best people to help and I worked seven days a week for about seven months with Richie Benaud, backed by the not inconsiderable support of Richie’s wife Daphne.

I remain to this day absolutely convinced that WSC — and with it what has become the modern game — would not have happened had Richie not been there. He did so much of the early planning, including the playing conditions and the scheduling. Grounds had to be found. I organised logistics … everything was by the seat of our pants, and had Richie and Daphne not been there I doubt that it would have come together at all.

Daphne was the details person, and as a team they were outstanding. I don’t think Richie ever had a title … he was just Richie … but he gave so much more to the success of WSC than merely his pre-eminence as a commentator.

Back in the 1960s, I was mates with a lot of Richie’s mates: Bob Cowper, Bob Gray and Ian McDonald for starters. Cowper, of course, was an Australian Test cricketer. McDonald was a Melbourne journo who finished up team manager of the Australian cricket team for many years. I first got to know Richie through them. Cowper and Gray shared a London flat and I often stayed weekends. In 1964, there were plenty of high times and Richie, on tour as a journalist with the Australian team, was a regular visitor.

Many people have their recollections of Richie the cricketer and Richie the commentator, but I have so many memories of Richie the man. Some thought him aloof. I actually thought that impression came from the fact that he was a shy person, never really comfortable about being the centre of attention. One of his more impressive qualities that few people ever saw was his acknowledgment of the role his parents played in his life. Many stories have been told about Keith Miller being Richie’s hero and I am sure there was an influence there. But Richie’s real hero was his father, Lou. I heard him tell stories of Lou so often, always with obvious and deep affection. Lou influenced his cricket and his life and Richie never hid his gratitude.

On the subject of Miller, I remember too how sorely tested was Richie’s loyalty to his old skipper when Miller had an interest in a horse that was racing at Sandown. Scobie Breasley was the jockey and Miller’s horse was outright favourite at 6–4 on in a four-horse race. We all jumped on it gleefully, including Richie, despite the fact he was a very modest punter, and despite the short price. The horse came fourth — dead last — and Miller’s name was mud, at least for a while.

Richie’s relationship with Bob Gray, especially in the days when they were competitors in the Sydney afternoon papers, was something to see. They were great mates, even though Bob’s rough edges sometimes seemed out of sync with Richie’s bent for the immaculate. For a number of years Richie and Daphne had a flat in Pont Street, Belgravia, in London, which they seriously remodelled.

The flat was gleaming when Bob came to visit, a most welcome guest. Everything was new, including the carpets. As Gray entered with great flourish, the inescapable realisation hit everybody that on the way in his shoes had collected a load that a dog had inconveniently dropped in the street outside the Benauds’ front door. Much fumigation and carpet scrubbing followed and Bob was a perfect target for Richie’s subtle chiding.

That flat was a magnet for Richie’s mates in various states of sobriety. Two of them were Jim Kernahan and Ross Jones, who were regulars on excursions that Ian Wooldridge and about 20 other blokes set up to run with the bulls at Pamplona. Most didn’t run … just drank … and despite the fact that Wooldridge, one of the great sportswriters, and Richie were great mates, Richie was appalled by the whole thing. He couldn’t imagine why grown men would run 900 metres down an alley with bulls trying to do them damage. He certainly never went.

On one occasion, Jim and Ross arrived back from Spain early one morning after a Pamplona adventure and decided to call on Richie for a bit of a hair of the dog. They arrived at the flat about 7am, demanding a bloody mary, many of which it seemed they had only recently stopped devouring. Richie invited them in, studied their status, gave them the bloody marys they were seeking and then politely invited them to ‘piss off’. We all knew we’d always be welcomed at Pont Street.

Richie’s steadfastness was among his more endearing characteristics. The Sunbeam Alpine he drove for years was one example. So was his food preference. His favourite restaurant in Beaulieu was the African Queen, and it was a lovely place.

I was privileged to dine there with the Benauds on a few occasions and Richie would order the same dish every time: curried mussels. I tried them and they were very good, but I doubt that Richie ever tried anything else. He liked what he liked and that was that.

There were many occasions when Richie was supremely generous with his time. I was involved in the early days of the Sydney Swans, and we instituted from the start a chairman’s lunch before each game. Early on, I asked Richie and Daphne if they would like to come, and I took a punt on asking Richie if he would mind being interviewed by the sportswriter Mike Coward as the entertainment centrepiece of the day. I was nervous about asking him, despite the fact I knew him really well, but he was gracious in most things he did and agreeing to do this was no exception. He must have filled this role for 15 years or so; he always came to the first lunch of the season and his stories were always rich and funny, and highly entertaining. There were many tales of his forebears, going back to the first Benauds in Australia, and there was also a fascinating poignancy to his talks.

In similar vein, Ian McDonald started a lunch club in Melbourne called the ‘Vingt Cinq Club’ in the early ’60s. They began with just 25 members and launched with a grand final lunch, in many ways the forerunner to the traditional grand final breakfasts of today. In later years, a lunch was staged to celebrate an anniversary of the Tied Test and Ian Meckiff asked me if I would try to get Richie down as guest speaker. I thought it was a long shot, but he agreed in a flash, would accept nothing for it, and turned on a marvellous occasion in which he was joined by Meckiff, Lindsay Kline and Colin McDonald, who had all played in that famous game.

When I lived in Melbourne I used to look forward to the Benauds’ arrival for the Boxing Day Test. My wife Karen and I would have them to dinner each year on the second day of the Test, along with Mark Taylor, Ian Chappell and Mike Coward, and they were always wonderful occasions, filled with many laughs. Richie and Daphne, on the evidence of a rough night about 30 years before, always drank plenty of water with their wine, but I never could get it right — sparkling or still? In the end, they gave up on me and started bringing their own water.

Among the various distractions that made those nights so special was one evening not so long ago when Ian Chappell was focused on a Big Bash twenty20 game involving the Melbourne Stars. ‘Would we mind putting on the TV?’ he asked. Richie launched into predictable derision, lecturing Ian in that singular tongue-in-cheek style of his about the inappropriateness of demanding the television when he was having a nice dinner in a host’s home.

‘But I have to watch some of it,’ Ian insisted.

‘Why?’ demanded Richie.

‘Because I’m the Stars’ chairman of selectors,’ Ian responded, somewhat sheepishly it must be said.

Richie sat with his back to the TV for the rest of the evening and made Ian squirm at every opportunity.

I had lunch with Rich and Daphne at the 18-footers club at Rushcutters Bay about 10 days before Richie went into hospital for the last time. Bob Cowper and his wife Dale were there too, and though Richie was physically much diminished … thin and gaunt … his mind was as razor sharp as ever. He talked of Lou and of great days, of good people and of fun times, and we had a wonderful day. Richie left us with the uplifting feeling that, although it was clearly drawing to a close, he had lived a wonderful life. For the rest of us, it was a privilege to have shared just a little of it.