– 6 – FUTURE GENERATIONS

‘Australian skippers since Benaud’s day have taken him as their beau idéal.’

— Frank Tyson

DOUG WALTERS

Doug Walters was a cricket prodigy who made the NSW team at 17 and the Australian team at 19, after leaving his birthplace, Dungog, in the Hunter Valley, at 16 to play grade cricket in Sydney. As his career blossomed, Doug fell under Richie’s wing in a variety of ways.

RICHIE BENAUD WAS A captain out of the ordinary at every level of cricket, whether it was a low-key club game on a suburban oval or a Test match. I remember one club game especially, a one-dayer against Northern District at the old Cumberland Oval, long before covers were ever invented for grade-cricket wickets. It had rained all week and the pitch was diabolical.

In grade cricket, Richie was not the most punctual of captains. Most of the time, someone else had to toss for him. But this day he turned up in time for the toss and it was an important one for us — especially the batsmen and more especially the openers, because no one wants to bat on a waterlogged pitch.

There was great anxiety as Richie came back to the room to announce that he had won the toss. Once he had told us there was much hollerin’ and hootin’. ‘You bloody beauty,’ we all cheered, assuming that Rich had put Northern District in. The impossibilities of batting in the mud would be their problem and not ours.

‘We’re batting,’ Richie said dryly.

I’m sure his sense of humour was such that he took great delight in our discomfort. The reaction was swift and ungenerous. ‘You bloody idiot!’ (and worse) was the chorus that went up. Richie just smiled. Then he explained.

‘It’s so wet out there the ball will skid,’ he said. ‘But after lunch it will pop and it will be a lot harder to bat then.’

Out we went to bat first. All out for 47. Back in the room, all the cussing and cursing started again. The ‘idiot’ theme got plenty more air. When we walked out for the Northern District innings, Richie took me to the strip and started carving a cross in it. He wore boots with incredibly long spikes whenever the ground looked like being a bit damp, and by the time he had carved a cross in the pitch, the marks were about an inch deep.

‘You and I are bowling, and I just want you to hit that cross,’ he said. I got five wickets for 20 runs. Rich bowled medium-pace and off-spinners and took 5–21. Northern District were all out for 43. Having been so ready to scoff at him after the toss, we were all very sheepish. He came back to the room with the gloating grin of a Cheshire cat.

It was classic Richie. A decision based on long experience, innate wisdom, great knowledge and the boldness to take a chance. He had an enormous confidence to back himself and his men, and all the players in the teams he captained knew it. His confidence and self-faith were contagious, and failure never held much fear for any of us.

When I left Dungog and came to Sydney to play, I chose Cumberland as my club because Richie was still there. Jack Chegwyn, a NSW selector of the time who used to take invitation teams to the bush, had recommended me after a game at nearby Maitland where I scored 50 and took a few wickets against one of his XIs.

I was 16, and coming to the big city was no small thing. My father died soon after I moved to Sydney and Richie became like a second father to me. He was about 15 years older than me, but the gap in worldly wisdom was wider than that.

I stayed with Harold Goodwin, a stalwart Cumberland player, and his family, and everybody was very protective of me, especially Richie. It was a huge thrill to play with him, first in grade cricket and then for a few Sheffield Shield games when I started as a teenager and he was about to retire from the first-class scene. I did play a lot with him for Cumberland, at a time when Shield and Test players often were seen on club grounds.

One instruction Richie gave me right at the start was priceless: ‘Don’t sign anything until you’ve shown it to me first.’ And that was pretty much the way it was. He was fantastic as a sort of manager before there were managers, and he didn’t have to do it. He was the NSW and Australian captain at the time, and looking after a country kid new to the big city wasn’t part of his brief. He just did it because that’s the sort of person he was.

Richie continued to support me in very tangible ways after he had retired from cricket. When I made the Test side in 1965–66 and scored hundreds against England in each of my first two Tests, I was suddenly confronted with commercial realities that I had never really thought about. I was offered contracts that seemed pretty attractive, and Richie stepped in and did all my negotiating. He dealt with the Slazengers and the Dunlops of the world, and by the time he had finished I was suddenly the highest paid Australian cricketer since Bradman. The result was a £1000 bat contract which, to a 20-year-old from Dungog, was mind-boggling money at the time.

Richie helped me out like that for a couple of years as my career settled. I could have used him at the end of it, though. When I retired in 1981 my contracts for everything — bats, boots, gloves and pads — added up to an inglorious $500.

I did have a brief commentating career with Channel Nine in the mid-1980s. On one occasion, I was on with Richie when Bob ‘Dutchy’ Holland was bowling against the West Indies. Dutchy had found himself on a turning Sydney pitch and the ball was spinning at right angles. When one ball spun about three feet I turned to Richie and said something like, ‘Gee, Richie, I bet you would love to be bowling on this sort of wicket.’

It seemed to me to be a reasonable thing to say. Richie’s head turned away. Silence. I assumed Richie had not heard me. The next ball turned even further. I repeated the question. Again, silence. I asked the technical guy if there was something wrong with Richie’s earpiece. He shrugged.

At the end of the over, Richie turned to me and said quietly, ‘I don’t answer hypothetical questions.’

Lesson learned.

I did not see a lot of Richie in more recent years, save for the annual Parramatta cricket club lunches which he always somehow managed to attend. I would have a few beers with him and chat about all sorts of things. I remember at one of them he was telling me that he had added length to his golf game.

‘The old Simmons woods have gone,’ he declared after I enquired about his golf. ‘I have metal woods now, and I hit the ball 50 yards longer.’ Those old clubs were something else, minuscule against the metal heads of modern clubs. But he liked them, and he stuck with them for decades. It was the same with his car. From just about the day I joined Cumberland more than 50 years ago, he was driving the Sunbeam Alpine that he drove to the end, and is now in his Coogee garage, somewhat bent. He was not one for change, at least not for change’s sake.

Richie was a stayer, always there, always loyal, and brilliant at what he did. It was a lucky day for me when I joined his team and became his friend.

JOHN GLEESON

John Gleeson was Australian cricket’s compelling ‘mystery bowler’ of the 1960s and early 1970s. He appeared in 29 Tests (1967–1972) and 116 first-class games (1966–1975), and toured England, New Zealand, India and South Africa with Australian teams. Except for the days when cricket took him to Sydney and beyond, he has lived in Tamworth in the New England region of northern NSW since 1958. ‘I reckon I’m a local now,’ he says with a chuckle. It was in Gunnedah, a little further west out along the Oxley Highway, that Gleeson first encountered Richie Benaud.

BACK IN 1965, WHEN I was invited to play for a NSW North-Western side in Gunnedah against a touring team that Jack Chegwyn, a wonderful contributor to NSW cricket, had brought up from Sydney, I decided there was only one bloke in the opposition line-up I wanted to impress: Richie Benaud. I had a plan worked out: when Benaud came out to bat I would bowl two orthodox off-spinners and then my ‘leggie’ that looked like an off break. But the strategy came unstuck when I caught and bowled Barry Rothwell off the second-last ball of an over. Benaud was the new batsman, but I had only one ball remaining in the over.

Unbeknown to me, Benaud and Chegwyn had been down behind the sightscreen while I was bowling, watching through binoculars. Maybe he reckoned he had me worked out when he got to the wicket.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, If he gets out and I haven’t bowled to him, I’ve missed my chance. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and bowl the leggie first up. It pitched where I wanted it and he tried to turn it down the legside. But it went the other way and his eyes opened wide.

It would be the only ball I ever bowled to him in a cricket match.

At the end of the game, Richie came over to me and asked, ‘Have you thought about playing in Sydney?’

I told him that I wasn’t fussed at all about playing in the city. I’d played for Country against City at the SCG — which was something I had wanted to do — and I’d pretty much gone around the world with the Emus (a unique touring club made up of cricketers from country NSW). ‘That’ll just about do me,’ I said.

‘I’ll just say this to you,’ Richie replied. ‘In 10 years’ time you’ll ask yourself the question: “I wonder what would have happened if I had gone to Sydney?” And you’ll never be able to answer that question. How about if I see what’s doing and give you a ring during the week?’

‘Righto,’ I told him.

On Monday afternoon, he rang and said I was playing first grade for Balmain against North Sydney on the following Saturday. If it hadn’t been for Richie, if he hadn’t done what he did that day, I would never have come to Sydney. I have him to thank for all that followed.

About 18 months after that game against Jack Chegwyn’s team I got to bowl to Richie during a practice session at the SCG. This time, I decided I’d bowl him the orthodox ‘offie’ first up.

I think he was concentrating on a lot of things … where my bowling hand was … my approach to the wicket … and, anyhow, I hit his off stump. He underarmed the ball back to me with the words, ‘I was still in Gunnedah.’

I kept in contact with Richie and Daphne in the years that followed and quite often stayed with them when I was passing through Sydney. We became quite friendly and there were good nights, sometimes as many as 10 or more people around the dinner table.

One such night, I looked at him and said, ‘By God, you sound like Billy Birmingham!’ I don’t know where that came from — it certainly wasn’t premeditated. Billy, of course, had sold a million records as ‘The 12th Man’, impersonating all the Channel Nine commentators. You should have seen the look on Richie’s face! I changed the subject very quickly and was thinking, Struth! What did I say that for? His bottom lip came out, I can tell you.

I’ve had a fortunate life, all of it to do with cricket. Some great tours and great times. I particularly remember the Emus’ world tour of 1961. And I will always remember Richie Benaud, such a good friend, who changed my life with what he said to me after a single ball I bowled in Gunnedah half a century ago.

BRIAN TABER

Brian Taber, ‘Tabsy’ to his many mates, played 16 Tests between 1966 and 1970 and toured England twice, in 1968 and 1972. Born in Wagga Wagga and an agile, natural wicketkeeper, he made his cricketing progress via Wollongong: from his club, Balgownie, he headed north to join the Gordon club in the Sydney grade competition … and onwards, all the way to the top. In 1971, he was appointed national coach by the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket (now Cricket Australia), the post being sponsored by the Rothmans National Sports Foundation. He’d continue in that position for more than a decade.

RICHIE WAS A MAN of generous spirit. My view is that the countless unknown ‘small’ things he did quietly in the interests of cricket in the years I knew him add up to being almost as important as his famous contributions at the game’s highest level.

I remember a long weekend in the early 1970s at Dubbo, in the central west of NSW, after I was appointed as national coach and Richie had come on board as a consultant. We had worked together by then over a fairly intensive period to produce a coaching manual, which would be the basis of our ‘Coach the Coaches’ program. There was a nice ritual to the making of that manual. In the early stages, I’d go over to Richie’s place at Coogee some mornings and we’d work together, preparing the material. Then he’d leave me for a short while and would go to his office, and I’d hear the telex clicking away as he dispatched his newspaper stories to England. At lunchtime Daphne would bring out a cold can of Foster’s for me, they’d have a glass of wine, and we’d have lunch together. Daphne would then type up the morning’s work and gradually, through this process, we constructed that first coaching manual.

Richie was a tremendous help and guide, not just with this manual but also with the constructing of exams for would-be coaches at different levels. When all was ready, we set up a trial Level 1 coaching course to be staged over three nights at Dubbo.

One member of the class was an Indigenous man, who was said to be a very good player and was the father of a promising cricketer. Keen to work with the young players in the town, he showed real enthusiasm in all that came up during the classes. So there was general surprise when he didn’t turn up for the final night, until someone quietly made the point that the scheduled written exam was a likely explanation — the fact being that this fellow couldn’t write.

I will always remember what followed — how Richie went out of his way to make contact with the missing student and then proceeded, in his typically excellent manner, to make everything right. Richie gave him the exam via a long telephone conversation, question by question. The bloke was spot on in his answers … and earned his Level 1 certificate.

Richie was always happy to help. On several occasions, I asked him would he have a look at a young player I had identified as having some potential. In his busy life, he never said no. Instead, he’d leaf through his diary and set a date. There was one strict stipulation: no press. Richie insisted that such ‘auditions’ be done quietly. He didn’t want any kudos and he didn’t want to put pressure on the young bloke involved. Such private events happened at various venues. On one occasion, Peter Leroy, curator at the SCG, specially marked up a pitch on that most famous ground. Another time, in Adelaide, the ‘class’ for a left-armer with a good wrong ’un was conducted on the day of a Test match — on a concrete pitch in a South Terrace park at the crack of dawn.

I’d generally keep wicket behind one stump, while Richie watched the budding spinner bowl an over or two. And then he would have a long talk to him about the art of spin bowling, leaving the boy with thoughts on the things he should be working on.

I remember a Country Carnival held at the SCG, where the boys from the bush would sleep at the ground over the two weeks, ready for their days full of cricket. The carnival culminated with games against Sydney’s Combined Green Shield teams on the SCG No. 1 and No. 2. Richie was one of a number of former and current stars who came down to help. I particularly recall him stressing to a group of young bowlers the importance of imprinting on their minds the spot on the wicket where they planned to land the ball. He placed a handkerchief on the pitch and then donned a blindfold, saying, ‘You’ve got to practise so much you can do this …’

And then he bowled a delivery that landed spot on, right on the handkerchief.

He was 10 years in the consultancy role at Rothmans and in that time I learned a whole lot from him. I wish I’d known some of that stuff when I was playing.

I first met Richie in 1955, when he came to Wollongong with one of Jack Chegwyn’s teams. My brother Ross and I were chosen to play in a Wollongong team against them. My memory is a bit faded, but I suspect Cheggy’s team was full of stars. I recall Jim de Courcy, who toured England in 1953, was there, as was Ron Kissell, who played Shield cricket for NSW, and Sid Carroll, who would be the major influence in my joining Gordon. Richie certainly was. A memory from the match is of him blasting a hook shot out of the ground and smashing the windscreen of a parked car, which belonged to one of the players. I was 15 and it was an amazing experience to be on the same field as Test and state players.

Years later, I would have my own near-accident with Richie, early one morning at the Australian Golf Club. When we were working on the coaching manual, I’d now and then get a call from Richie suggesting a (very) early hit of golf before we started work. We’d be on the first tee around 6am and, with the help of a cart to get us around, we’d be back at Coogee to begin the working day by nine. On this day, Richie hit his tee shot on the 16th, and then jumped in the cart and moved it forward a little. I mishit my drive off the heel of the club, and it flew at a zillion miles an hour into one of the markers on the ladies’ tee, from where it ricocheted straight into the cart, with Richie in the driver’s seat. Freakishly, the ball hit the steering wheel but somehow missed him completely. A fraction higher or lower and there could have been a headline!

Richie loved his golf. At one point, he had a favoured Ben Hogan putter that he put out on the balcony at Coogee so the sea air would get to it, and add some rust and character. He certainly had character himself.

I found, whether playing with or against Richie, there was always so much respect for him. The Richie I knew was a man of strength and principle. I recall as clearly as if it was yesterday a lunch I attended with him and Bob Radford, secretary of the NSW Cricket Association, at the Tattersalls Club in Sydney. Not long before, Richie had handed back his life membership of the NSW Cricket Association in protest at the association’s actions during the 1969–70 season, after they suspended his brother John, then the NSW captain, for wearing low-cut, lightweight, ripple-heeled boots that they had deemed unsafe and unsound. Only boots with full spikes would be permitted, declared the hierarchy. John’s ban was eventually repealed after a month of ridicule. The crazy thing was that, at the time of the dispute, Dougie Walters, John Gleeson and I, all NSW players, were wearing the new boots on the Australian team’s 1969–70 tour of India and South Africa.

The lunch at Tatts turned out to be about Richie’s resignation. Bob gradually eased towards the subject. Finally, the moment arrived and Bob pleaded with Richie to reconsider his decision.

‘No way,’ said Richie.

The Association subsequently had a couple more tries on the issue, but each time it was, ‘No way.’ That was Richie Benaud — rock-solid to the core.

BARRY KNIGHT

Barry Knight played 29 Tests for England as a batsman and fast-medium bowler, and made two Ashes tours to Australia — under Ted Dexter in 1962–63 and Mike Smith in 1965–66. He later emigrated to Australia, played club cricket in Melbourne and extensively in Sydney, and was a coaching pioneer. He established an indoor coaching school in Sydney that over the course of nearly five decades set a lot of teenagers on the way to celebrated Test careers.

IT WAS EXTRAORDINARY, BIZARRE even, the way I got hold of Bill Lawry’s baggy green cap. It was at the end of the first Ashes Test in Brisbane in late 1962. I had been picked in England’s team after getting a handy 60-odd in the MCC match against a Combined XI in Perth. The Brisbane Test was a bit of an arm wrestle. By the last afternoon England were six wickets down and Richie had nine men around the bat looking for the winning wickets. Fred Titmus and I had to pat away a couple of overs to seal the draw.

I suppose I blocked 10 or so deliveries in those final pressured minutes, and I was feeling pretty relieved when I got into the dressing-room and collapsed on the bench, glad we’d saved it. Not 10 minutes later, Richie had dropped on to the seat beside me. The rapport between teams after the game was a little more sociable in those days.

We chatted away about the game, about how I liked Australia, about nothing in particular and everything in general. Then out of the blue he said to me casually, ‘Have you got an Australian cap?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘no, I don’t have an Australian cap.’

At that moment, Bill Lawry was standing nearby, chatting to Freddie Trueman. Richie reached up, pulled the baggy green cap from Bill’s head and gave it to me. I didn’t quite know what to say or do, but Bill didn’t seem to mind, so I kept it. Still have it. I think the Australians got a few caps in those days, but it was still a pretty strange and very generous thing to do. As I’d come to learn, this was the way it was with Richie.

I didn’t play any more Ashes Tests on that tour and I didn’t really get to talk to Richie again until about 1970, after I had moved to Australia. I played club cricket for Carlton in Melbourne and then for Balmain and Mosman in Sydney. In Sydney particularly, in the days before daylight saving, I quickly realised that club cricketers didn’t get a lot of practice, because by the time they left work and headed off for a net the light was already fading and time was short.

This meant there was virtually no coaching for players in Sydney. Especially the up-and-coming ones. I had worked at Alf Gover’s cricket school in London, where good players practised indoors, and also at a coaching school Trevor Bailey had set up, and it seemed to me a similar sort of thing could work in Sydney. So I rang up Richie to see what he thought.

He agreed there were plenty of good young players in Sydney who could benefit from such a project. Some former Test cricketers weren’t so sure. I remember Jimmy Burke claiming Australians played naturally and that coaching would spoil the game. Others agreed with him. They didn’t want to be like England, I think was the consensus. Richie didn’t think like that. He could see the value of proper technique and didn’t think that necessarily meant abandoning natural talent.

I obtained a lease on two floors of a building in the city. Richie was writing for The Sun in those days and he gave my new cricket school some good publicity, as did his friend and fellow journalist Phil Tresidder, whom Richie brought along to our opening. Richie also got some Test players along, then Phil booked two nets for a few hours every week for the Randwick club. Before long, we had a good thing going.

Richie also suggested one other thing that was quite revolutionary at the time, but a big step forward in the science of sports coaching. He rang me up and suggested I come with him to meet Forbes Carlile, the renowned swim coach who at the time had the world champion, Shane Gould, in his squad. We had lunch and Forbes explained what he was doing with the new concept of video recording, taking underwater shots and the rest so that he could analyse swim strokes.

Richie made the point that it could work with cricket. He organised a video camera for me and soon we were recording players while they were in the nets and then showing them what they were doing and how they could do it better. I kept that coaching school going for 47 years. Of all the young players aged between 11 and 15 whom we coached, 28 went on to become Test cricketers, men like Allan Border, Adam Gilchrist and the Waugh twins among them. They can all thank Richie for the foresight he had.

Richie led the field in other ways when it came to structured cricket coaching in Australia. He was involved early with the Rothmans National Sports Foundation, supporting Brian Taber in the construction of a coaching manual and helping to gather the best of minds to formulate coaching policies and techniques. I remember one seminar over about three days in Sydney, when he chaired a group that included Australian players like Bill Lawry, Jack Potter and Norm O’Neill, and the Australian-born former Leicestershire left-arm spinner Jack Walsh. Ideas sprang from everywhere. Fitness was raised as a field to improve, although I recall Norm wondering how carrying someone on your shoulders up a hill could improve your cover drive.

Richie advised me on all sorts of things, such as when I thought about trying to do some coaching in India with videos over the internet. All right in principle, he would say, but will it work? Always down-to-earth, he would go through the pros and cons. Every new idea I had, I ran past him. Daphne, too, was helpful. When I toured Australia in 1965–66, she was with the party as secretary to team manager Billy Griffith. On the way home, I asked her guidance on buying some jewellery for my wife and she took me to a place in Hong Kong where she said the actor Stewart Granger had bought pearls for his wife, Jean Simmons. Immaculate advice, as it turned out.

For many years, Daphne and Richie would invite my wife Annette and I to dinner at Coogee during the Sydney Test. Bill Lawry would always be there and Tony Cozier, the gifted West Indian writer and broadcaster, was often there as well. I claimed Richie as a friend, although we were never in each other’s pockets. He was like that, I think, with many people.

Before he got into television in a big way, Richie was like many ex-cricketers from what was essentially an amateur era, trying to find his place in life after cricket. He set up a catering business for a while, but a partner let him down. Thank goodness he did not stay in that trade too long. Had he remained a caterer, the sporting world would have been a far poorer place.

GREG CHAPPELL

Greg Chappell, second of the famous cricketing brothers, was an artistic batsman who scored a century on his Test debut at the WACA Ground in Perth in 1970–71. This was the first of his 87 Tests for Australia, in which he scored 7110 runs and captained the Australian Test team either side of World Series Cricket, between 1975 and 1983. Greg worked for a time as a commentator in the Channel Nine commentary team and has had a long involvement in coaching. As Australian captain, he was the architect of the underarm bowling affair in an ODI against New Zealand in 1981, making him the target of Richie’s most strident criticism.

RICHIE BENAUD EPITOMISED THE words of Mark Twain: ‘The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.’

Richie led a full and creative life in which fear may have played a very minuscule, inconsequential part. As a player, he prepared well and played with abandon. His captaincy was bold and adventurous. As a broadcaster, he was peerless.

I feel like I have known Richie all my life.

When my brothers and I were young, our father imbued a love of the game in us and encouraged us to learn from the best. I can remember as a 10-year-old going to the Adelaide Oval to watch a Sheffield Shield match between South Australia and NSW.

NSW were led by Richie Benaud and contained six of the then Australian team. Dad had suggested that Richie, Alan Davidson, Neil Harvey and Norm O’Neill were the players to watch. I followed their every move on and off the playing field. From memory, Richie scored some runs in the first innings and took wickets in the second to bowl NSW to victory. My other hero, Neil Harvey, scored a scintillating 84 in the first innings.

Even to a 10-year-old, Benaud had an air about him. He was cool and aloof, but when I approached him cautiously to collect my first ever autograph, he couldn’t have been kinder and warmer. I was a fan from that day and followed his career closely, even modelling myself on him by becoming a leg-spin bowling all-rounder! My leg-spin didn’t survive the journey, as I never overcame growing six inches in one summer holiday period as a teenager. But, luckily, my batting allowed me to follow his footsteps into Test cricket.

My next interaction with Richie came 11 years later, following my maiden Test innings in the first ever Test match in Perth. Richie was now a commentator and was working at that game. Following my successful debut, I was interviewed by Richie at the end of the day’s play. At the conclusion of the interview, we walked together back across the WACA and Richie offered me a piece of advice: ‘Whatever you do, don’t ever stop playing your shots.’

This was intended to be encouragement to a young player, but I misinterpreted the advice and tried to play shots from the start of my innings for the next few Tests and failed to make an impact. Once I learned that I had to be selective about which deliveries I attacked, my career gained the benefit of his wisdom.

During the second season of World Series Cricket, in 1978–79, I went through a lean period against the formidable West Indies pace attack. So I sought out Richie for some advice.

My method to that point had always been to expect the full ball and respond to whatever came along, but, because the West Indian bowlers were pitching so few balls up, I decided to get on the back foot early to get ready for the short balls. Suddenly, I found that I was getting out to full balls and struggling to make the most of the few bad balls that I received. Richie reflected on my problem for a few moments and then suggested that I go back to doing what had allowed me to be successful to that point. As usual, he was spot on and my form and fluency came rushing back.

One of Richie’s great traits was his positivity about the game and towards the generations of players who followed him. He never lived in the past and was effusive about one-day cricket when it came in and T20 cricket in more recent times.

He was always supportive of me … other than the infamous day at the MCG when I ordered my younger brother to bowl underarm against New Zealand. His summation of the day was scathing.

I was stung by his criticism, because it came from my boyhood hero. He was, of course, entitled to his opinion and, without any knowledge of some of the things going on in the background, he was entirely correct to be affronted by what I did. I made a mistake for which I have expressed my remorse. It is a decision that I wish I had never made.

We never discussed the incident. I didn’t feel the need to and I had no doubt that Richie believed he had said what he felt and moved on. Our relationship was largely unaffected in the aftermath. He continued to be unfailingly generous and gracious in his assessment of me and my career.

Though hurt at the time, I have never held his comments against him. He was not only professional but extremely supportive when we worked together in the Channel Nine commentary box. The Nine commentary team became iconic in the years when Richie led the band of Test-match captains, all of whom held him in the highest esteem.

Amazingly, it was Billy Birmingham, the 12th Man, with his parodies of the commentary team, who took them to an even wider audience. Birmingham really ‘caught’ the personalities of Benaud, Lawry and Greig — and indeed the commentary box — in a way that endeared them universally. It seemed everyone was practising Richie’s ‘What a catch!’, Bill’s ‘He’s got ’im!’ and Greigy’s comments about the ‘cor pork’ and the ‘putch report’.

Some of us in the commentary box, too, would practise our Birmingham Benaud-isms, but not when Richie was around! Bill Lawry is the only one I saw who did it to Richie’s face and that happened when they were on-air together during a domestic one-day game in Hobart in the 1990s.

South Australia were playing Tasmania and reached a score of 2–222, which Bill mischievously read as ‘chew for chew hundred and chwenty chew’, including the pouting bottom lip. Bill thought it was so hilarious that he put the microphone in his lap and collapsed in paroxysms of laughter.

Richie probably saw the funny side of it, but he wasn’t going to give Bill the pleasure by joining in the mirth, so he put his microphone in his lap and stared down his nose at Bill and silently dared him to go on.

Each time Bill picked up the microphone he collapsed into laughter and couldn’t speak. Richie wouldn’t commentate either, so two overs went by without a word while Bill composed himself. Once again, Richie showed his dry wit and sense of timing as he had the last laugh, letting Bill stew in the juice of his own making.

Richie led a very full and interesting life, with cricket as the backdrop for most of it. He enriched the game with his love and his knowledge and graced it by never looking backwards and lamenting the past or the changes. He always looked for the positives in the game, and in those who played it. He will be sorely missed and the game will be much poorer without him.

MIKE WHITNEY

A lively left-arm paceman and crowd favourite, Mike Whitney played 12 Tests and 38 one-day internationals for Australia between 1981 and 1993. Whitney emerged as a character of the game with his energetic and spirited approach. He was famously conscripted to make his Test debut while playing league and county cricket in England in 1981. At the end of his cricket career he headed on to a diverse working life, anchored by his role as host of the TV show Sydney Weekender, which was first broadcast by Channel Seven in 1994 and is still going strong.

IT WAS THROUGH THE great cricket, rugby and golf writer Phil Tresidder, that I first encountered Richie Benaud, during the season of 1977–78. Tres invited ‘Mr Benaud’ — that’s certainly what I called him then — down to a Randwick club practice at Coogee Oval one evening. I was in my second year of fourth grade and things were going well after a good debut season. Phil had told Richie about a couple of ‘up-and-comers’ and this ‘tearaway left-armer, a surfie from Maroubra with an afro hairstyle’ whom he should come down and take a look at.

The nets in those days were at the sou’-eastern end of the ground and the moment Richie arrived the intensity of the whole practice session went up by about 30 per cent. Phil brought the Great Man over and I was able to say hello and shake hands with him. Returning to the nets, I proceeded to tear in, bowling as fast as Wes Hall, and in the process hit a couple of our blokes. After a while, Tres called me over again. ‘Richie’s got something to say to you,’ he said. Richie looked at me.

‘I’d like to see you pitch a few more up,’ was all he said.

Moving on to 1991, I’m with the Australian team in the West Indies and we’re getting ready to play in the first Test. Rich is banging away on an old typewriter beside the swimming pool at our hotel. I went up to him and introduced myself.

‘How’re you going?’ he asked.

‘I wonder if we could have a bit of talk about my bowling,’ I asked.

And so we sat there for half an hour, talking about reverse swing and bowling on Caribbean pitches, all kinds of stuff. When the conversation finally ended, I thanked him and he looked at me in his way and said, ‘It’s just nice to see you pitching a few more up these days.’

It was a line delivered with all the typical Benaud dryness. I was stunned. He had remembered Coogee Oval all those years before. I don’t know whether he ever realised how funny he could be. I walked away and burst out laughing. It was the way he delivered his message. Again!

Tres once told me a story that captures a little of the dryness of Richie’s wit and delivery. He was playing with Richie and another close golfing mate at the Australian. On a par three, Richie landed his tee shot nicely on the green, as did Tres. The third bloke was in the bunker, from where he promptly holed it for a two. Richie and Phil putted out for pars and not a word was said until arrival at the next tee, when Richie looked at the birdie bloke and just said: ‘Prick!’

There is another story that is my all-time favourite about Richie, whether true or not. It was during a Test at Lord’s after the BBC had lost the cricket rights and Richie went across to Channel 4. It was all happening that morning: as part of their innovative new coverage, Channel 4 had hired a blimp to provide some overhead shots and these were now being beamed out with Richie providing the commentary. ‘There is the Thames,’ he said, ‘Westminster Abbey … the Houses of Parliament.’ Then the camera focused on the London Eye, the great new attraction of the city. ‘And over there,’ Richie declared, ‘is the London Wheel.’

As the story goes, Mike Atherton was up the back of the box that day, thinking of the millions of pounds the city of London had spent on the Eye. At an appropriate moment, Athers walked over and tapped Richie on the shoulder.

‘Rich, it’s the London EYE … not the London WHEEL.’

Richie didn’t miss a beat. He half-turned as he answered: ‘Not any more, it’s not.’

True or not, it’s a classic Richie story and part of his legend.

STEVE WAUGH

Steve Waugh made his Test debut as a 20-year-old on Boxing Day, 1985. His first three-and-a-half years as an international cricketer were difficult; he failed to score a Test century but did have some productive days in ODI cricket, most notably at the 1987 World Cup. After being dropped from the Test XI in 1991, he came back two years later to establish himself as one of the game’s greatest players, finishing his career in 2004 as the most-capped Australian player and with the best win-loss record among all regular Test captains.

IT JUST CAME IN the post, out of the blue. It would have been 1987, maybe 1988, not long after the World Cup we won in India and Pakistan in late ’87. Simon O’Donnell and I had been mucking around in the nets, trying out various slower balls, but when we began deceiving a few blokes we realised we had a secret weapon that gave us a distinct edge. Simon had plenty of success with a ball he bowled out of the side of his hand, a sort of exaggerated leg-cutter, while mine came out of the back of the hand, with my wrist pointing the opposite way to a conventional delivery at the moment of release. After we claimed the cup as 16–1 outsiders, people knew we were on to something special.

Inside the envelope was a letter, from Richie Benaud. I must confess I was stunned when I saw who it was from. I felt like I had known Richie for just about my whole life, through his TV commentary and what I had read about his playing and captaincy career, but I’m fairly sure I had never had a long conversation with him to that point in my life. We’d regularly see the great Alan Davidson at junior matches and then senior rep games, and he was always supportive of the team after each match no matter the result. I’d bumped into Neil Harvey at various exhibition games and he was helpful and friendly. But while I was in awe of those blokes, Richie was somehow a rung higher. There was Bradman, then Benaud. And he was writing to me.

Richie wrote how he had been impressed by my slower ball and how I had the courage to try something different. It was a trait, he wrote, that he admired. He encouraged me to explore other variations to extend my repertoire. Attached to that letter was a photocopied article from an American sports magazine that he thought would be of interest to me. It showed different grips used by US baseball pitchers — for an assortment of pitches such as curve balls, change-ups, cutters, sliders, splitters and so on. Maybe one or more of these grips might inspire another new delivery.

The information was interesting. The fact Richie Benaud had taken the time to do the research, write a few comments, get my address and send the letter … that blew me away.

As it turned out, while I read his letter and the article closely, and I tried a variety of experiments in the nets, it didn’t lead me to discover another effective delivery. But I still believe what Richie did for me played an important part in my development as a cricketer and as a person. Here was the best cricket brain in the business encouraging me to think outside the square, that all the answers might not be found in conventional coaching manuals, that it was okay to look beyond cricket in my quest to be a better cricketer.

It was also a huge encouragement for me, aged 22 and struggling to find my feet in Test cricket, to have a man of Richie’s calibre noticing what I was doing on the field, seeing some potential in me, wanting to help. That was a real boost to my confidence.

I never became an intimate friend of Richie’s, but — except for the guys who moved to the commentary box — I don’t think many of my cricket generation did. It wasn’t his way to get too close to the players he was commentating on, and I respected him for that. By keeping that distance, he was never in a position where his views might have been compromised by a friendship. I was a bit the same as a player. I didn’t want to get too friendly with the members of the media, for fear that would change their expectations of what I could and couldn’t do to help them.

In my view, what set Richie apart as a commentator was his fairness. He was authoritative and unbiased, and he came across as open and honest, which meant that players and fans alike respected him. If he criticised, he was constructive — it was never just for the sake of it.

Whenever I ran into him and Daphne, and found myself in conversation with them, I always found the subject and the way they approached it to be very interesting. The best chats were rarely about cricket. They were what I would describe as ‘worldly’ people, able to talk with authority and passion about a wide range of subjects. I’m not sure Richie was a man to tell too many long stories, but he had an amazing ability to get to the nub of a conversation, to sum things up in a few words. He had an almost mesmerising effect on people. When he spoke, people listened.

In 1998–99, I missed a number of one-dayers because of a torn hamstring, and was consequently invited into the Nine box to call a bit of the action. As is the way, I was thrown in at the deep end — no rehearsal, no training, fend for yourself, good luck. At this stage of my life, I hadn’t ruled out maybe one day doing some commentary, so I was eager to pick up some pearls of wisdom from the experts. When I had the chance, I peppered Richie with questions: ‘How do you do the live cross to the studio without an autocue? … How do you close the coverage? … How do you remember what you’re going to say? … Do you have advice?’

He paused …

‘Well, Steve,’ he finally said. ‘Just don’t make any mistakes.’

That was all he said.

At first I thought he was taking the mickey out of me. But then I realised his message was this: It’s not easy. Don’t complicate things unnecessarily. Keep it simple.

I know now that this advice works well with a lot of things, not just crossing to the six o’clock news. It was typical Richie.

SHANE WARNE

When Shane Warne emerged on the world cricket stage in the early 1990s, he was soon regarded as ‘the best Australian spinner since Richie Benaud’. In fact, Shane went on to a career of unprecedented achievement, finishing with more than 1000 international wickets (708 in 145 Tests; 293 in 194 ODIs). Best of all, he revived the art of leg-spin bowling. In the years since his retirement as a player after Australia’s 5–0 Ashes clean sweep in 2006–07, he has established himself as a popular and perceptive TV commentator in England and Australia.

I WAS AN 18-YEAR-OLD cricketer at Lord’s trying to ply his trade when I first met Richie, and it wasn’t long before we got onto the topic of spin bowling. His passion for this subject was apparent from the very beginning. I count myself very lucky that as time went by I was able to call Richie Benaud, and Daphne, true friends. Over dinner now and then through the years, Richie and I would inevitably talk about spin bowling — grabbing bread rolls or whatever was in the vicinity that might be useful to demonstrate grips, how to bowl flippers and all of that.

Of spin bowling, he had a favoured phrase: ‘Give it a rip!’

To me, he was the Marlon Brando of cricket: the Godfather. He was also a wonderful guy. It seems that everyone talks about Sir Donald Bradman being the biggest figure, the most influential person in Australian cricket. But, for me, it’s Richie who will be remembered as the most influential individual of all, considering everything he contributed to the game over so many years. His achievements were across the board — on the playing field, then through the revolution of World Series Cricket as a broadcaster and on to become, in my view, the greatest of all sportscasters. He was the master of the one-liner and the pregnant pause. His silences were as famous as his brief declarations, which could be as simple as ‘practise’ when he was giving advice to a young cricketer trying to become a better one. And he seemed always to be right on the money. From the first time I met Richie, my opinion of him was always one of absolute admiration.

The ‘Gatting ball’ from the first Ashes Test of 1993 changed my life. As soon as play ended that day, it was back to the hotel waiting for the highlights. (Maybe I had a pizza in between!) To watch it back then was fantastic. To have Richie call the moment, as he did, took it to another level.

He set the scene with characteristic simplicity: ‘The first ball in Test cricket in England for Shane Warne.’ Then the ball took Mike Gatting’s off bail. ‘He’s done it!’ Richie called. ‘Gatting has absolutely no idea what has happened to it …’

One of the greatest things about Richie was the generous way he passed on the knowledge — his knowledge — of legspin bowling. And he handed it on for such a long period of time, and not just to Aussies, but worldwide. He loved cricket, the game itself, but he especially loved leg-spin bowling.

I’ll always consider myself lucky that he passed on so much of his wisdom and information to me. In turn, I’m trying to pass that on to as many young leg-spinners as I can, wherever they happen to be.

Richie Benaud was one of a kind. In the minds and memories of those who saw him play and those who came to know him, and for all of us who appreciate his standing in the game, he will never be replaced.

SIMON KATICH

Simon Katich played 56 Test matches for Australia, the first of them at Headingley, Leeds, in 2001. Katich has never forgotten the words offered then, nor the understated support that followed him through his career.

EVERY AUSTRALIAN PLAYER WHO is presented with his first baggy green cap is filled with pride when that moment comes before his debut Test match. For me, it was more than that, because Richie Benaud was involved. I remember being blown away when I was told such a revered figure was doing the presentation. To say the moment was special is a grand understatement.

The words that Richie offered as he handed me the cap have stayed with me always, proof enough I think of the wisdom, the balanced perspective and plain commonsense he maintained throughout his time in cricket.

‘There are many more important things in life than a baggy green cap,’ he said. ‘But to an Australian cricketer it is the ultimate achievement. Every time you wear it, wear it with pride … and enjoy yourself.’

I felt a certain affinity with Richie after that. I would often bump into him at functions and the like, and he always had a kind word. I made my Test debut some 50 years after he started, yet all the players of my generation had an enormous respect for him … for his achievements as cricketer and Australian captain, and also for the balance of his television commentary.

It was in his nature to be positive. He was never negative. If he criticised he did so in a constructive way, even a nice way, and though the message was always clear it was done in such a manner that offence was never taken. We always found him fair, and it was impossible not to respect his judgment.

Impressively, too, he was a humble man. He never imposed himself or his opinions on the generations of cricketers who followed him. And he never forgot his roots. I remember an evening when I was invited to speak at the Parramatta club dinner. Richie was there, honouring the club that gave him his introduction to cricket, and mixing with the young players.

The young men lapped it up. There was no generation gap here. Richie fitted in as he might have done more than half a century before, when he was one of them. It was the nature of the man.

MICHAEL CLARKE

Michael Clarke retired from international cricket after the Ashes tour of 2015. He had been in the Australian team for more than a decade, and captain since 2011. Michael amassed 8643 runs in 115 Tests, including 28 centuries, and his 31 Test wickets included one haul of 6–9 against India. He made a century on his Test debut, was part of two 5–0 Ashes series wins (as a player in 2006–07 and captain in 2013–14) and two World Cup triumphs (in 2007 and as captain in 2015), and scored 329 not out against India in 2011–12, the first triple century ever scored in a Test at the SCG.

AS WITH MOST CRICKETERS of my generation, I grew up with three distinctive voices always in my head. The television was our link with the big time, and Richie Benaud, Tony Greig and Bill Lawry somehow made it all come to life. Richie had a style all of his own and the voice seemed to fit it perfectly. He was all dignity and commonsense and knowledge.

The first time I met Richie, officially anyway, was at the Allan Border Medal in 2005. I had won it for the first time, and I remember talking to Richie on stage and marvelling at the fact that he sounded in the flesh exactly as he sounded on television. I have no idea why I was surprised. Maybe it was the fact he had been parodied so often, but somehow I had it in my head that the TV voice was just that, and he would probably be different face to face.

I called him Mr Benaud at that first meeting. It just seemed right, given the standing he had in the game and the way I had looked up to him from early childhood. We all idolised him when we were kids, and not only because of his work on television. We had all heard the stories of his deeds as a cricketer.

I had always soaked up as much of the history of the game as I could and wherever I turned there was always an aura about Richie Benaud. I have loved talking cricket with players of past generations and without exception they have always had a special regard for Richie — as a player and a competitor, and as a gentleman of the game.

Through my years in first-class cricket I would see Richie regularly, and he always had time for a chat and to provide some gentle encouragement. He would often tell me to back my gut instinct, to play the game as I felt it.

I came to respect the help that was always available from the Channel Nine ‘old guard’. I got to know Tony Greig especially, given he was on the pitch so often before the start of play, and when I had a go at commentary myself, during the Melbourne Test match of 2014–15, it was a real thrill to work with Bill Lawry. Regrettably, I never got to discuss the art of commentary with Richie, but I have spoken to so many who did, and the wisdom he offered was unique.

I would have loved to have seen Richie play. I have read and heard so much about him; he must have been a brilliant player and leader. He has left a wonderful legacy, part of which, I believe, relates to the role he played in the modern resurgence of leg-spin bowling, especially as it was embodied in Shane Warne. I know Warnie took a lot of inspiration from everything Richie achieved, the guidance he offered and the remarkable example he set.

FOR SIR DONALD BRADMAN, ADELAIDE, 25 MARCH 2001

Exactly a month after the death of Australia’s Great Cricketer, a public memorial service was held at the Adelaide Oval. Richie delivered the eulogy.

It’s not quite perfect outside, I guess. Rain coming down. A bit of a dodgy pitch. Wind blowing. But I reckon he would have handled it with all his consummate skill, no matter what it might provide out there. There is a crowd out there filled with memories. The bowling changes here at the cathedral end have been many and varied. We’ve now got an ageing leg-spinner and I think The Don might have welcomed that.

He was the most famous of them all at a time when despair ruled Australia because of the Great Depression. Seventy years later, one hundred selectors from around the world nominated the five greatest players of the century. The Don received one hundred votes. Not far away from him was that finest of all-rounders, Garry Sobers, who got ninety. But one hundred out of one hundred is pretty good.

When I was six years old, Bradman was captain of Australia in the concrete storeroom at Jugiong where I played Test matches. When I was 10 he was still captain on the back verandah at Parramatta where he led and won and was absolutely brilliant in all those Test matches I used to play against England. I wasn’t alone, in that thousands and thousands of other youngsters around Australia played their Test matches like that — Bradman and McCabe made all the runs and then O’Reilly and Grimmett bowled out England every time. Wondrous days …

I was lucky to be around as captain when that extraordinary series of Test matches was played against West Indies in 1960–61. One of the significant happenings in Australian cricket came about at the start of that series when, the night before the first day of the Tied Test, The Don came to me and asked if it would be all right if he came to speak to the team … The gist of his short talk was that he and Jack Ryder and Dudley Seddon, the other two selectors, would be looking in kindly fashion on those cricketers in Australia who played the game in attractive and attacking fashion and thought of the game rather than themselves. The unspoken words were that anyone not wanting to fit in with those plans shouldn’t think about giving up their day job.

The more important tour was the one he undertook in 1948. That was the one where he was captain of the Invincibles, and some of those great cricketers are here tonight. He was always of the opinion that it was close to impossible, because of changes in conditions, to judge which was the best ever cricket team. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that those Invincibles would have given more than a reasonable account of themselves in any contest against any other combination in any era. Three of those — Miller and Morris and Lindwall — were wonderful mentors for me. They did a superb job of trying to get me to think about the game and people and to do the right thing, all in their completely different ways.

Miller underlined for me the fact that it’s a good thing never to take oneself too seriously. Back in 1950–51, Freddie Brown had the MCC side out here and NSW was playing South Australia in Adelaide in the Shield game just before the first Test in Brisbane. It was November and as a selector Don was watching the match just 20 yards along to the right where the visitors’ dressing-room was and still is. ‘Pancho’ Ridings gave us a most awful hammering that day, thrashed us everywhere. We were a very weary bunch at the end of the day, resting in the leather chairs and looking over here to the cathedral, not saying much. Except I was chirping away. You’ve got to bear in mind that I had just turned 20 and I knew most of what there was to be known about cricket, so I chirped. I didn’t get much response at first but I chirped again. I said to Miller that because Bradman had retired the moment I came into the game it was one of the sorrows of my life that I had never been able to bowl my leg-spinners to him. It was still very hot, about 85 to 90 degrees at that time of the day, and South Australia had just belted their way to four for 374. ‘Nugget’ never took his eyes off the cathedral. He didn’t turn to me but just looked straight ahead and ruminated for a full two seconds before murmuring: ‘We all have one lucky break in our lives, son, and that could have been yours.’

In the images of the family funeral a few weeks ago there were some memorable moments; sad but memorable. I was particularly taken by three things, which to me had a bearing on the fact that he was regarded with affection by old and young.

There were older people standing silently and just looking. There was a youngster, a boy scout, who saluted and held his salute. And then there was what a few people had said to me they thought to be a little irreverent, and that was: ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!’ Because he was a sportsman with such vision and because he had a feel for young cricketers — no one ever had a better feel for them; of all the people I have known, he wanted to see youngsters get on — I think he would have liked the blending of the modern with the old in that moment with the funeral procession going past. It all marries into something that he used to talk about: that cricket simply is a reflection of life.

Above all else he was very much an Aussie. He was an Aussie sportsman and a great sportsman, said by his critics never once to have questioned an umpire’s decision. He was a sportsman and it wasn’t just for a few sessions or a few days, it was for all eras and for all sports followers.

Above all else, he was a sportsman.