PRELUDE THE MOST PROMISING YOUNGSTER SINCE BRADMAN

THE FINAL ASHES TEST of 1920–21, played at the Sydney Cricket Ground, was one of the most notable in Australian cricket history, and not just because the home team completed a 5–0 series clean sweep. In the crowd for the first two days were a father and son from Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands — George and Donald Bradman — and the ‘privilege’ of seeing Charlie Macartney score a superb 170 is said to have helped mould the ambition of 12-year-old Don.

Also in the Sydney crowd during that Test was one Louis Richard Benaud, a young cricketer from Penrith, a township situated 50 kilometres west of the SCG, at the foot of the Blue Mountains. Lou’s parents, Richard and Nellie, had given him a trip to the Test as a 17th birthday gift. He, too, was transfixed by the great Macartney. The coincidence of these famous Australian cricket names — Bradman and Benaud — being similarly inspired is equally charming and compelling.

Cricket was in the Benaud family’s DNA. At a cricket presentation night in Penrith in 1934, Lou’s father told the gathering, in a speech recorded in The Nepean Times, ‘If there is one sport that is dear to my heart it is cricket. It has been so since I was a boy.’ Eleven years earlier, that same paper had reported a remarkable effort in the Nepean District B-grade competition …

The Nepean Times (March 31, 1923): A phenomenal bowling performance stands to the credit of L. Benaud, of Penrith Waratah CC. Playing against St Marys, he captured the whole 20 wickets of the match. This is surely a star performance of the first magnitude. Last week we recorded the fact that in the first day’s play of the match Benaud captured ten wickets for 30. That feat in itself was somewhat of the sensational, but that he should repeat the performance so far as the number of wickets is concerned on the next Saturday was something entirely undreamt of. Yet on Saturday he bagged the whole ten wickets at a cost of 35. Thus in the match his analysis was 20 wickets for 65 runs.

Lou also bowled well during the 1922–23 summer for the Parramatta High School XI and soon he was selected for the NSW Combined High School team. Then he was offered a chance by the Cumberland grade club, but his promotion to first grade in 1925 coincided with his graduation from teachers’ college. After just one game with the firsts, he was posted to a tiny school at One Tree Farm, near Casino on the NSW far north coast. For the next few years he would also teach at Warrendale School, located just outside the township of Koorawatha, near Cowra in western NSW, and then at Jugiong, 100 kilometres further south, not far from Cootamundra. He returned to Sydney and settled at North Parramatta in 1937.

Lou had met and married Irene Saville during his tenure at One Tree Farm. Lou and Rene’s first child, Richie, arrived on October 6, 1930, when they were living at Koorawatha, though the birth occurred at Penrith, under the watchful eyes of Richard and Nellie, because there was no resident doctor at little Koorawatha.

The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate (September 23, 1937): Grade cricket will make its bow on Saturday, when Cumberland will meet University at University No. 1 Oval. The selected team contains only two changes from that which regularly represented Cumberland last season. Colin Denzel, ex-Westmead all-rounder, who has shown excellent form at practice, is back with the firsts, and L. Benaud, who has been appointed to the staff of Burnside school, has gained selection …

Lou quickly established himself as one of the better leg-spinners in Sydney grade cricket. Meanwhile, his son was also being noticed.

Alan McGilvray (1992): I first met Richie Benaud, so he tells me, at the old Cumberland Oval in Parramatta back in the 1930s, when Richie was all of six years of age. Even then the young Benaud was something of a devotee, following his father Lou as he trundled his leg-breaks quite successfully around the grounds of Sydney district cricket. I batted a few times against Lou Benaud and knew him as one of the real tradesman bowlers of Sydney cricket. He worked long and hard for his successes, as any slow bowler must, and to Australian cricket’s great benefit the trait was handed down to his eldest son Richie.

The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate (April 12, 1939): Richie Benaud, son of Cumberland’s first grader Lou Benaud, bids fair to follow in his father’s footsteps as a cricketer. Playing with Burnside in the schools competition, Richie, who is only eight years of age, has been not out each time he has batted for a total of 58 runs. He already possesses a very sound defence and a knowledge of which ball should be hit, and, in addition, is a fair bowler.

As a schoolboy, Richie led Burnside Public and Parramatta High School to premiership wins. He made his grade debut at age 11; having been given the job of scoring for Cumberland’s secondgrade team, he got a game when one of the regular players failed to turn up. He made his ‘genuine’ grade debut a week before his 15th birthday, at the start of the 1945–46 season, in third grade. His initial first-grade appearance came a little more than a year later, when he replaced Lou, who was unavailable for one game. Father and son first played together in grade cricket in Richie’s second first-grade match.

Cootamundra Herald (December 2, 1946): District cricketers who knew Lou Benaud when he was schoolteaching at Jugiong, or who made his acquaintance elsewhere, will be interested to know that his 16-year-old son, Richie, is being hailed by critics as a potential international. Unlike Dad, who mainly made his name as a bowler, young Benaud is a class batsman. Playing for Cumberland first grade against Marrickville, he got within two of the century and handled all bowlers with ease. When in the 90s, Richie was joined by his father, and one sporting writer says that for the first time in his splendid innings the lad showed nervousness. At 98, he stepped out to a delivery by V. Collins, missed, and was stumped.

Ken Hardy (‘Talking of Sport’ column, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 28, 1947): Keep your eye on this young cricketer. Good judges are picking Richie Benaud, 16-year-old Central Cumberland batsman-bowler, as the most promising youngster since Bradman. This season he has played first grade (best scores, 98 and 89), AW Green Shield, Poidevin Shield and has made the state Second XI — a unique record. He is a born captain.

The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate (January 5, 1949) Youthful Cumberland all-rounder Richie Benaud has made cricket history. He joins that small band who have been selected to represent their state at the age of 18. With Jim Burke he shares the honour of being the youngest player in Australian first-class cricket today. Both lads were members of the NSW XI in the match against Queensland at Sydney Cricket Ground.

Just a week after that story appeared in the Parramatta local paper, Richie found himself at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, batting three in a NSW-Victoria Second XI game.

HA ‘Hec’ de Lacy (Sporting Globe, December 17, 1952): I saw young Benaud first on the fateful occasion of his first big game in Melbourne back in the 1948–49 season, when NSW Second XI played the Victorian seconds. The night before the game commenced the pitch prepared was soaked and the surface lifted. Quickly a new wicket had to be rolled. New South Wales batted. The pace bowlers flew head high and Benaud was struck in the centre of the forehead by a ball from Jack Daniel.

The blow left a small crater in Richie’s forehead; he was carried off on a stretcher, spent two weeks in hospital after X-rays confirmed a shattered bone, and did not play again until the following season. Remarkably, there was no permanent dent in his confidence.

AG ‘Johnnie’ Moyes (1962): When I watched Benaud hooking Tyson and Wesley Hall I marvelled at his courage. That tremendous blow, received at the beginning of his career, might well have caused him to flinch when the ball dropped short — or at least could have ended any desire he had to play the hook stroke. It didn’t. He continued to hook — Tyson, Trueman, Hall and others — and to hit the ball with tremendous power. A man who will do that has a fighting heart, real personal courage, and indeed audacity.

Bill O’Reilly (Sunday-Herald, October 30, 1949): A splendid 200 partnership between Ron James and Richie Benaud was the outstanding feature of the day’s play at Lidcombe Oval. In Benaud, Cumberland has a grand colt who is bound to make a name for himself in the highest spheres of the game. In stature and offside stroke play he resembles the late Archie Jackson most strikingly.

Richie scored 160 not out in 201 minutes in this match against Gordon. It was his maiden first-grade century. Lou Benaud, shrewd as ever, realised that his son’s all-round abilities now needed every opportunity.

The Sydney Morning Herald (November 24, 1949): There will be only one Benaud in the Cumberland first-grade XI against Manly at Lidcombe on Saturday. Lou Benaud has been chosen in the second-grade team; his son Richie will now be the principal spin bowler, as well as star batsman, in the first team.

The Cumberland Argus (July 26, 1950): For the first time in its history a member of Central Cumberland District Cricket Club was selected to lead the state XI, the club’s fifty-third annual report states. He is club skipper Ron James, who led NSW to Sheffield Shield victory in 1949–50. James followed up his good work by topping the State batting average … The season also saw the passing from first-grade ranks of two veteran players who have given the club long and outstanding service both on and off the field. They are spin bowler Lou Benaud and fast bowler Lloyd Cadden. Both dropped out of the first team halfway through the season. In true sporting spirit both players considered that it was better to relinquish their places in the first XI and allow younger players an opportunity to make their debut in the higher grade.

A broken thumb, suffered in a grade game in early December 1950, just after he had been named in an Australian XI to play the touring Englishmen, kept Richie out of first-class cricket for two months and stifled any talk about him being selected in the Test team during the 1950–51 Ashes series. But a string of encouraging performances for NSW in the following summer, including his maiden first-class century (117 v South Australia at the Adelaide Oval), won him a place in Lindsay Hassett’s side for the fifth Test against the West Indies, at the SCG.

In the Sunday-Herald, Tom Goodman commented: ‘It is pleasing that one of the younger players of promise, Richie Benaud, has been brought into the Test picture.’ Bill O’Reilly agreed: ‘It is good to see Benaud “blooded” now.’ In Melbourne, the cricket correspondent for the Argus was bold enough to compare Australia’s newest Test cap to one of Victoria’s finest: ‘Sydney experts believe Benaud has greater batting assurance than any Australian cricketer of his age. They hail him as showing promise of becoming the greatest all-rounder of his type since the late Warwick Armstrong.’

Richie’s Test career started quietly: scores of 3 and 19 and bowling figures of 1–14 from a single spell of 4.3 eight-ball overs. By the following season he was being lauded across the country as a future star.

Jim Mathers (Truth, October 26, 1952, after Richie scored 63 against Queensland): T he p layer w ho m ost c onsolidated h is position was undoubtedly young Richie Benaud, who stole the show from the seasoned internationals with virile batsmanship. Benaud compiled 63 in 86 minutes. He hit eight glorious boundaries with cover drives, hooks and pulls. Some of his drives must have taken the paint off the pickets with the violence of impact. If Benaud continues to develop, he might well become Australia’s glamour cricketer within the next couple of years.

Hec de Lacy (Sporting Globe, December 17, 1952): There’s another Keith Miller in the Australian field. It’s Richie Benaud, 22 years, and the best white hope in the all-rounder class in Australian cricket. Benaud has the same free-swinging bat, the same crisp shots and the same determination to get his runs aggressively that has characterised the batting of Miller, the greatest pinch-hitter in cricket.

In the Argus, Tom Goodman was more cautious. ‘Bowlers take years to mature,’ he wrote, ‘but if Benaud can convince the selectors he is improving his leg-spin attack he will do a lot of good for himself.’

Richie was 12th man for the opening Test against South Africa, and came into the XI for the second Test at the MCG, replacing Ian Johnson, a member of Bradman’s Invincibles in 1948. Again, the returns were modest, though a fighting 45 in Australia’s second innings was widely praised. He kept his place in the Test side for the rest of the season and did just enough to ensure his selection for the 1953 Ashes tour.

Lou Benaud (1953): Naturally, I am delighted with his selection. I have always taught Richie to be self-reliant and have guarded against any change in his natural style. Many young players of promise have been ruined because their style has been too drastically changed. Cumberland Cricket Club has done a marvellous job for Richie ever since he has been with them.

Previewing the tour for the Adelaide Advertiser, Sir Donald Bradman wrote: ‘In young Benaud will be found a cricketer who could easily be mistaken for Miller as he moves lithely after a ball. Their movements, build and mannerisms are similar. Benaud is a lovely field and a batsman who can hit with tremendous power, but strangely enough in bowling he reverts to slow leg spinners. He may easily be called upon to do a lot of work and if so will obviously enjoy it.’

However, in a squad that included two other frontline spinners, Doug Ring and Jack Hill, and fellow all-rounders Keith Miller, Alan Davidson and Ron Archer, opportunities turned out to be few. Richie played in three Tests, averaging just three with the bat and 87 with the ball. His potential was still recognised by some experts, though, including the celebrated commentator John Arlott, who wrote: ‘If his figures make Richie Benaud a Test failure it is because they cannot show in its true proportion some of the finest catching that could be wished and because as good a leg break as was bowled all season — which completely beat [Denis] Compton when he was set and going well at Lord’s — appears as just another wicket.’

Richie returned to Australia to learn that Ron James had stepped down as captain of Cumberland, to give the club’s Test representative the opportunity to develop his leadership skills. In the Sheffield Shield, the law was changed in Australia so that captains couldn’t claim a new ball until 60 eight-ball overs had been bowled or 200 runs had been scored. Since 1947, captains had been able to claim a new ball after just 40 eight-ball overs. ‘The game fell into a narrow groove,’ wrote Ray Robinson in his book Green Sprigs. ‘The frequent new balls encouraged a crop of medium-pace and fast-medium swing bowlers …’

Ray Robinson (1954): One February afternoon in 1954, Sydney onlookers saw two googly bowlers, Richie Benaud and Bob Simpson, 18, entrusted with the attack for almost two hours (a sight unknown since pre-war days when O’Reilly, Grimmett, Pepper, Ring, Ward and McCool took most of the wickets in Australia, and NSW often had three of them in one eleven). Benaud’s captain, Miller, kept him bowling for 16.2 overs without interruption, except to change ends. Gradually, the young allrounder began to look like a Test bowler …

Richie kept his place in the Test side throughout the 1954–55 Ashes series, but not everyone agreed with the selectors. All that early promise remained unfulfilled. Having played 13 Tests by the end of the summer, Richie was still without a Test fifty or five wickets in a Test innings, though his first-class statistics were more encouraging.

His rise as a quality international cricketer began in the Caribbean in 1955, when he took 18 wickets in five Tests and scored his first Test century: 121, batting eight, in the final Test at Kingston, Jamaica. He reached three figures that day after just 78 minutes at the crease. However, Australia’s 3–0 series win represented something of a false dawn, because after a promising start the team’s Ashes campaign of 1956 disintegrated in the north of England, on dry, dusty pitches that were made to order for England’s spinners, Jim Laker and Tony Lock.

The bright spot for the tourists came at Lord’s, in the second Test, which was won by 185 runs. Keith Miller took 10 wickets and Richie played arguably the best innings of his life.

Seven years later, the famous cricket writer Neville Cardus recalled meeting Richie after the third day’s play, at a dinner hosted by another celebrated cricket figure, the author and commentator John Arlott.

Sir Neville Cardus (1963): There was ‘something’ about him which impressed me, a suggestion of latent and alluring personality. The impression was strong enough to urge me to write an article, to appear before the game was resumed next morning, in which I risked a forecast: ‘Before we are much older Benaud will do something forcibly to demonstrate his natural and unmistakable gifts.’

Well, on this fourth morning, in a ticklish moment for Australia, with the day fresh and Trueman after blood with four wickets already rendering him even more than usually voracious, Benaud arrived at the ground almost late and had to rush into action at once, pads buckled breathlessly. Immediately he attacked, risking a long-armed drive. Also he hooked Trueman for six — and Trueman was the first of thousands to applaud the stroke. Benaud trusted his eye daringly. In two hours, 20 minutes, he scored 97, swinging clean round the wheel of the game in the one engagement of the rubber won by Australia.

This innings, maybe, marked the turn of his career.

The Australians did not return straight home after this tour. Instead, they remained in Europe for three weeks and then travelled back via the Indian subcontinent, playing one Test in Pakistan and three in India. It was against the Indians that Richie finally snared his first Test five-fors (7–72 at Madras; 6–52 and 5–53 at Calcutta), as he revelled in the extra responsibility that came with being a more prominent figure in the squad. Ian Johnson’s best days were clearly behind him and vice-captain Keith Miller had retired after the Ashes Tests; Richie relished bowling first or second change in all three Tests against Polly Umrigar’s Indians.

Keith Miller (1975): Neil Harvey is an astute judge. Neil came back from India and Pakistan and announced that Benaud could really bowl. From that point, Richie developed into a top-flight bowler. He had something of the O’Reilly touch. He could get lift off the pitch.

With Johnson retiring, critics expected the next Australian captain to be one of Harvey, Ron Archer or Richie, with Harvey the popular choice. Instead the selectors went for 22-year-old Ian Craig, part of a youth policy brought on by the retirement of Miller, Johnson and wicketkeeper Gil Langley and the decline of Ray Lindwall. Queensland’s Wally Grout was the new keeper, and Alan Davidson led the attack. Benaud was also now unequivocally a senior player and he responded on Australia’s 1957–58 tour of South Africa with one of the finest all-round performances in a Test series. In the fourth Test, a critical game with Australia leading 1–0 in the series, he hit 100 batting four and took 4–70 (bowling second change) and 5–84 (first change) to inspire the side to a 10-wicket win. For the series, he had 30 wickets at 21.93 with four five-wicket hauls, and he scored 329 runs at 54.83 with two centuries. ‘It was on this tour that Richie really emerged as the world’s best legspinner,’ recalled Harvey in 1963.

Wally Grout (1965): Richie earned this success with his sweat. He was the most enthusiastic and diligent member of the team, the first to practice and the last to leave. He was also the best spin bowler I have seen …

His shock ball was, of course, his famous ‘flipper’, which I got to know so well that batting against him in interstate cricket never bothered me. The flipper was the ball he literally squeezed from his fingers, yet giving the impression he had spun it from the hand. When it landed, instead of turning away from the righthander it fizzed off the pitch without a fraction of deviation. No wonder it netted him a haul of wickets.

The South African adventure was also Alan Davidson’s ‘breakout’ series, as he took 25 wickets at 17.00. After a four-year ‘apprenticeship’, the Benaud-Davidson combination evolved into the best fast man/slow man bowling partnership Australia had until Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. Richie’s control was as good as any leg-spinner before Warne, and while he never spun his leg break or his wrong ’un all that far, it usually turned far enough. His high delivery generated rare bounce for a spinner and got the ball to dip and drift. Again like Warne, he disguised his flipper better than his googly.

When Ian Craig was struck down by hepatitis in 1958, Richie was the surprise choice as the new captain. Most expected Harvey, Craig’s deputy in South Africa, to get the job. It was an inspired decision.

Alan McGilvray (1992): Benaud, more than any captain before him, recognised that the game had to ‘go modern’. He lifted its pace, imbued it with a new, outgoing enthusiasm and opened it up to the public with an enlightened flair for public relations that was without precedent. And all of this came at a time when the game badly needed a shot in the arm if it was to maintain public support. Benaud gave it that, ushering in a period of success and prosperity to match any in the game.

Wally Grout (recalling Richie’s first Test as captain): Jimmy Burke was batting to Peter Loader, who switched from bowling over to round the wicket. ‘Burkie’ requested that the sightboard be shifted to a position which would have obscured the view of some of the ground members sitting under the marquee, but to crusty officialdom this was unpardonable and the sightboard attendant was instructed not to comply. Burkie, after some fruitless waving, gave it away and settled down to pick Peter as well as the conditions allowed.

But he fell to the next ball from Loader, which he had lost in the backdrop of the crowd. Richie knew nothing of the sightboard incident until Jim’s outburst in the dressing-room. He leapt from his seat, face black as thunder, and charged over to the members’ area. I don’t know what was said and probably never will, but when the next request came to move the board in front of the members, it was moved.

The series had started slowly, with men on both sides — and especially England’s Trevor Bailey — batting at a snail’s pace in Brisbane until Norm O’Neill played boldly for 71 not out on the final day. Thereafter, Richie’s vibrant approach carried the day.

He captured 31 wickets as an England line-up that had been initially acclaimed as one of the best to come to Australia was thrashed 4–0. Then, in eight trying Tests in Pakistan and India in 1959–60, he took 47 more as Australia won both series. Yet this was all just a prelude to the main event: the 1960–61 West Indies tour of Australia.

This series, remembered as the greatest ever played in Australia, was Frank Worrell’s first as West Indies captain.

CLR James (1967): Worrell made the tremendous decision to restore to Tests the spirit of the game he had learnt in Barbados. [He] initiated a regeneration. Benaud, the Australian captain, met him halfway and the result was the most exciting Test series in living memory.

Jack Fingleton (on the first Test): In the final analysis, perhaps the two greatest men in the match were the two captains — Benaud and Worrell. There were many times on this final day when either might well have sought a foxhole, as so many before them have done. They could have played tight, shut the game up, played for a draw. But neither wanted a draw; both wanted victory; both played it that way and out of the spirit of the game came this peerless Tie.

It was a series full of incidents, drama and glory, highlighted by the incredible final session of the first Test, featuring a wonderful seventh-wicket partnership between Richie and Alan Davidson and culminating in Wes Hall’s last over, three wickets, a dropped catch, a missed run out, Joe Solomon’s sure throw to run out Ian Meckiff, the first tied Test. Richie took his 200th Test wicket during the series. He was the fourth bowler to reach this landmark, after Clarrie Grimmett, Alec Bedser and Ray Lindwall. He had needed 24 Tests to take his first 50 Test wickets; the next 150 wickets came in 25 matches.

Prior to Australia’s tour of England in 1961, Richie told reporters, ‘We want to win very badly but if we lose, we want to lose playing attractively. It doesn’t concern us what the opposition does. We have our policy and will stick to it.’

And this they did, resulting in one of the most memorable of all postwar Ashes series. Benaud himself was hindered by a torn tendon in his right shoulder and missed the second Test at Lord’s (where Australia, captained superbly by Harvey, won by five wickets). He was back for the Leeds Test, but failed to score in either innings as Fred Trueman bowled the home team back into the series. After four days of the fourth Test at Old Trafford, Australia led by 154 runs with four wickets in hand.

Jack Fingleton (1970): Benaud thought highly of Lindwall’s cricket acumen. Lindwall was a master in his analysis of batsmen and, drawing him aside from the drink in the committee room which is always a pleasant feature of Test cricket at Old Trafford at the end of a day’s play, Benaud asked him to walk to the middle with him. On the deserted cricket ground, the two famous Australians studied the pitch and particularly the marks Trueman had made at the railway end.

‘What do you think of the idea of bowling slow spin around the stumps into these marks?’ asked Benaud. Lindwall pondered. ‘To tie the scoring down or get wickets?’ he asked Benaud.

‘Well, either, depending upon circumstances,’ said Benaud.

Lindwall thought again. ‘I think there is merit in the idea Rich,’ he said. ‘But it would need to be very tight spin bowling. You don’t look like having many runs to play with. I would be inclined to give it a go. But it must be tight or …’

And Lindwall shrugged his shoulders.

Next morning, almost immediately, Australia lost three wickets to the off-spinner David Allen. But Davidson remained and, while the rookie No. 11, Graham McKenzie, held up his end, the great all-rounder produced the second of his two famous Test innings. He had made that heroic 80 on the final afternoon of the Tied Test; now he scored a brilliant 77 not out, the highlight being the 20 runs he took from one Allen over, a premeditated assault that prompted England captain Peter May to take off the bowler the Australians feared most. The last-wicket stand was worth 98; England needed 256 to win.

And for a while it seemed they’d get them comfortably, as Ted Dexter flayed the bowling. With Harvey’s encouragement, Richie put the ‘round the wicket’ plan into action. Everything changed.

Frank Worrell (1961): Benaud bowled better than I have ever seen him bowl before, and his going around the wicket was the third vital factor on this extraordinary final day. His accuracy and direction from both sides of the wicket were fantastic.

Sir Neville Cardus (1961): In the face of Dexter’s great and brilliant onslaught he [Benaud] did not flinch. In Australia’s dire position at mid-afternoon he could honourably have ‘put up the shutters’, deployed a defensive attack and field. Instead, he played the game, bowled his fingers to exhaustion, and never lost the true sportsman’s glorious vision. And the gods at last crowned him — as the gods usually do crown the man who keeps the faith.

England lost its last nine wickets for 51 runs. May was bowled around his legs for a duck by a ball that spun viciously out of Trueman’s footmarks. Richie finished with 6–70, having taken 5–12 in a spell of 25 deliveries. The Ashes retained.

Bill O’Reilly (1962): Bill Woodfull, who skippered the Australian and Victorian sides in the early ’30s, lost the Ashes to England once and won them twice. He was a first-rate opener who gave his team many an inspiring start in Tests, even when the Bodyline series of 1932–33 raged through the land. He knew the rules inside out.

And his team, of whom I was one, all hold imperishable memories of the solid dignity of a man whose courage was commensurate with a full pack of rugby forwards. Even with all these qualities, Bill Woodfull never captured the public imagination as Benaud has done …

In 1961–62, Richie was joined in the Cumberland first-grade side by his 17-year-old brother John, who would go on to captain the club and his state, and wear the baggy green. NSW won the Sheffield Shield for a record ninth season in a row. However, Richie’s final Ashes series, at home in 1962–63, was an anti-climax. Level at one-all after four Tests, the rubber petered out in disappointing fashion in Sydney. Harvey and Davidson retired, and Richie announced he would bow out at the end of the following Australian summer. This meant his career would end against South Africa. That farewell series would begin with the most controversial day of his entire playing career.

The Australian selectors surprised by recalling Victorian left-arm quick Ian Meckiff for the first Test. The legality of Meckiff’s bowling action had been questioned during previous seasons and it was thought his Test days were through. Now his career was ended in the cruellest fashion, as square-leg umpire Col Egar called him for throwing four times in his first over. Richie refused to try him from the other end, explaining to the press at day’s end: ‘Over the years I have accepted the umpire’s decision. This is one I must stand by. I will not bowl Meckiff again.’

Lou Rowan (the umpire at the bowler’s end): Richie could have shifted all the blame on to the umpires, but he chose not to do that. He was prepared to accept the opinion of an expert and leave it at that. Those who saw fit to castigate Richie for what he failed to do may well have castigated him further if changing Meckiff to the other end had brought further troubles.

Richie broke a finger on his bowling hand while playing in a grade game between the first and second Tests. Bob Simpson took over as captain. When Richie returned, he suggested he do so purely as a player, given that Simpson would be leading the team on the forthcoming tour of England. In his final Test, at the SCG, Richie bowled 49 overs in South Africa’s first innings, the most overs he ever bowled in a Test innings in Australia, finishing with 4–118. He retired with 248 Test wickets, 2201 Test runs and 65 catches from 63 appearances, and would remain the only man to complete the 200 wickets/2000 runs/50 catches treble in Tests until Garry Sobers joined him in 1971. Most remarkably, his days as a highly influential figure in world cricket had only just begun.

Richie’s first job after leaving school had been as a 16-yearold clerk in a chartered accountant’s office in Pitt Street, Sydney. In 1950, he took a job in the accounts department at The Sun newspaper, where he stayed for six years until he approached Lindsay Clinch, the paper’s editor, about a transfer to editorial. He was offered the chance to write a sports column but declined, saying he wanted to work on news and police rounds. This led to him working under Noel Bailey, The Sun’s legendary crime reporter. ‘The finest training of all was to trail on the coat-tails of Noel Bailey,’ Richie would say years later. ‘It was wonderful to see and hear him in action.’

Bill Jenkings (police roundsman for the Sydney Daily Mirror, 1946–1979): The most famous opposition I ever had was Richie Benaud. I never had the ability to compete against him on the cricket field, but as crime reporter on The Sun for a brief period in the 1950s, he was a gentlemanly opponent. He was filling in for holidaying Noel Bailey at the time, but never once did I know him to try to use his position as captain of the Australian cricket XI for favourable treatment. He’d attend the daily police press briefings and, sartorially speaking, put most of us crime reporters to shame. Richie was a lively conversationalist and a debonair figure.

Richie would go on to write for a number of newspapers across the world, most notably the News of the World in Britain and The Sun in Australia. His words would be syndicated across the cricket world. He was also a columnist for numerous magazines, wrote 10 books, and contributed to or edited many more.

His career as a broadcaster had its beginnings in a decision he made at the end of the Australians’ 1956 tour of England, when he opted to stay in London to participate in a BBC television training course. During that Ashes summer he had been intrigued by the work of now-celebrated TV commentators such as Henry Longhurst at the British Open and Dan Maskell at Wimbledon. As part of the three-week BBC tutorial, he was given the chance to observe close-up how Peter O’Sullevan called the races at Newbury, and also learned how producers and directors and their crews went about their business. The course didn’t immediately lead to a career in this new media, but it did provide a launching pad for all that followed. ‘Many are called and surprisingly many are given the opportunity behind the microphone,’ the great sportswriter Ian Wooldridge would observe as he paid tribute in 2005, after Richie’s last Test as a commentator in England. ‘Very few have served the slogging apprenticeship that makes a master cricket commentator.’

Richie spent much of 1960 in England, working as a journalist, sub-editor and occasional radio commentator, and playing a little cricket, including a series of televised one-day matches. He didn’t commentate on any of these games but he did make sure he was interviewed as often as possible by the BBC’s Brian Johnston and Peter West. His first TV commentary experience came in England in 1963. He would work with the BBC (1963–1997) and Channel 4 (1999–2005) in the UK, while in Australia he did some stints with Seven and then Ten when those commercial channels briefly covered Test cricket, before joining the Nine Network in 1977.

Jim Laker (1979): I have the greatest admiration for Richie. He was a magnificent cricketer, in my view the best captain Australia has produced during my time, and that included Sir Donald Bradman. As a cricket commentator he is far ahead of anyone I have heard in any part of the world, and never have I met a more industrious, hardworking yet generous ex-cricketer in my career.

Alan McGilvray (1992): I admire Benaud above all others as a television commentator on cricket. His commentaries are reasoned, full of insight and experience, and sufficiently concise and understated as not to grate on the listener.

He handles his work as a commentator with all the aplomb he once showed as a captain. And the lesson of history will always be that he was one of the game’s more enlightened and influential leaders.

Richie became a cricket constant during Australian and English summers, a much loved and hugely respected figure. His decision in 1977 to join Kerry Packer’s revolutionary World Series Cricket as a consultant and commentator was controversial at the time, but ultimately it added to his reputation, and proved that when his father taught him to be self-reliant, he taught him well. A players’ rights man from first to last, Richie backed WSC because he truly believed in it. The credibility his support gave the new venture was priceless.

The names Bradman and Benaud remain the two most important in the history of Australian cricket, not just as great cricketers and captains but also because of all they did in the decades after their playing careers ended: Sir Donald mostly as an administrator; Richie largely as a giant of the cricket media. While we know that Lou Benaud and George and Don Bradman attended the fifth Ashes Test of 1920–21, we don’t know exactly where in the SCG they were as they watched Charlie Macartney’s magnificent innings.

Given how the next 95 years unfolded, it would have been perfectly appropriate if they were sitting side by side.