He loved London and thankfully twice fulfilled the Lord’s dream: the innings in 1986 was good; 1994 was something else. That gammy knee could not deny a masterpiece presented at the game’s greatest theatre. This innings may not have been his best given the terms of engagement but it was, he thought, the purest. Almost certainly, the 188 at the Gabba (Hadlee’s match!) in 1985 was the most hardcore, and hundreds in Guyana in 1985 and Lahore in 1990 the most efficient against all-conquering attacks.
Another must be mentioned, though of a social nature. Paul Getty’s XI versus the Australians 1997 at Wormsley, plenty of middle-order batsmen but only one opener. Marty, not having held a bat since retirement a couple of years earlier, played and missed at three out of six in Glenn McGrath’s first over. From the third ball of the next, he eased onto the back foot and drove to the extra-cover boundary. He made 115 not out. It was breathtaking, and beautiful of course. By heaven, he was a lovely batsman to watch. We should have won but the rest of us could not climb the same ladder. Generously, Mark Taylor’s Australians came into our dressing room to shake his hand and share their beer. Michael Slater said, ‘I spend hours in the nets trying to bat like that and you come out after two years and . . .’
A further text has just come through from Jeff. I have asked which of his brother’s innings he most rated. Lahore, he says, or the three innings at home in 1987—all against the West Indies—that defined him. Then he adds, ‘His 174 against Pakistan in Wellington was mapped out on a piece of paper six months prior as we flew to Fiji!’
Deep analysis was not only applied to his batting. Captaincy, coaching, commentary and committees, innovation, progress, prediction and, finally, writing all benefited from this remarkable mind. In my experience, no one has been able to see into the crystal ball like Martin. Cricket Max was genius of its type, a forerunner of the modern T20 game and of where it might well go ten years down the line. His blueprint for a World Test Championship was a bad miss by the ICC and remains so. His thoughts on the television production of sport and the rhythms of good broadcasting are priceless. Martin did not always say what people wanted to hear, but rarely could they argue successfully against him. Beneath it all was an unflinching passion for the game, a love and knowledge so deep that sabbaticals were required to ease the tension between him and his life’s pursuit.
The last time we saw each other, almost a year ago now, we took a gentle walk from Bondi to Bronte in Sydney. We rested on the grass bank above Bronte beach and talked about the past, present and future. He was at peace at last, he said. Though the year of remission in 2013 had proved to be a wicked temptress, he was back in the fight of his life. He resisted further chemotherapy, preferring instead to feel alive and mentally strong for these extended days with Lorraine and Emma. The journey through illness had brought him self-discovery and a hitherto unseen lightness of being. He let go of demons and explored friendships. He loved his brother and could now tell him so, rather than refuse the two-foot putt for par. He had not realised quite how much the death of his father in 2000 had troubled him, but with time to think and pray, he had even come to terms with that loss.
Recent communication has been by text, email and a few phone calls. The mind has been willing but the voice has been weak. There has been something charming about a fearless gladiator so in touch with his own mortality. Suddenly, out of nowhere last month, an email was sent to Jeff and me. Through the haze and drugs of pain relief, it talked cricket again, a final offering to the game. Jeff is convinced it was meant for the world. Jeff knows the beauty of the game like few others and best understood his brother’s remarkable mind.
First ball: off the long, eternal run.
People in administration (the good and the ones doing their best but not reading the brief properly) come and go, you know, a cyclical thing. And so Srinivasan has gladly departed and Giles Clarke’s time is waning. Interestingly, Cricket Australia are beautifully on the front foot and, for daring measure, are even dancing down like yesteryear, such is their newfound confidence at the helm. A year on from creating a stinky breakaway, the garden smells rosier again, and it is grand to see a potential shift back to the central truth. The Big Three were rightly targeted by an aggressive media, who saw the poor getting poorer fast and the divvy-up unfair and unsubtle. Bye bye, Srini. This first, fast curving first ball was you.
Second ball: respectful, 4th stump, consolidation of line and length.
Davie Warner has a second child, named Indi, very cool and diplomatic. He also has a damn good respect for the game too. Nothing but goodwill coming from the Warner Family in recent times. As a result, a heap of focus on notching up daddy ton and, take note, he stands in waiting for the most important office in Oz. Yes, sad that Brad Haddin got mad and didn’t see the exit sign with a smiley face flashing brightly as he departed. That being so, my sympathies with him around his family hardships through a period where there is no escape. It’s a hard act to please all. But that’s what almost all individuals have done over the last year, governed by strong leaders who have instructed their teams to forgive and forget. Thus they inspired youngsters and their families to follow this vital advertisement for cricket as we all reeled and mourned Phil Hughes. That ball grew us up real fast.
Third ball: pink this one and swinging late, then seaming and bouncing, all under a darkening sky and a floodlit stadium.
Pink balls need greasy conditions, apparently, to make it last the correct amount of overs. I say leave the pitch alone and decide over a few tests on a mark when a second new pinkie is needed. Patience, and a few more games, then the mark will become clearer—as opposed to juicing up conditions which dramatically alter the landscape. The purpose is defeated if manipulation comes first over mystery. Easily fixed in time. Yet, I believe, the horse has already bolted with Test cricket. By not sticking with the proposed Test championship concept set down for 2017, the chance, the obvious window, the golden egg, has gone. Not that it won’t be tried sometime, but the die is cast on Test cricket—it’s dumbing down and mediocre standard of participation. It has historic meaning still but has become costly and slow, and has been overtaken by T20. The West Indies have fallen, but they will rise again for sure, dressed in full three-hour action gear.
Fourth ball: leg-spin mode and spinning fast from leg, a side where a boundary sits obsolete with no chance of catches from a top edge off these modern bats—the fans are as busy now looking to claim (and protect family from) those skiers, as busy as any outfielder has been.
Ten years ago, Australia played NZ in the first ever Twenty20 International at Eden Park. Thirty-thousand turned up on a balmy night and saw Ricky Ponting, a true great, irresistibly caress the ball to all and sundry for 98 glorious runs. In the com box we wondered, and worried a touch too, about the effect this would have long term—on everything.
As the leg spin is released, forget our long term musings because that momentous wonder we had way back has just hit home. When I read Stephen Fleming’s quote about 80,883 attending the Big Bash derby match at the MCG on Jan 2, between the Stars in green and the Renegades in red, I felt it. Fleming, not one for throwaway attention, made a call that was forthright and honest, yet said clearly to state a moment in time for all to take notice: ‘To have more than 80,000 at a domestic match [outside of India] will send absolute shock-waves through the cricketing world.’
Cricket Australia, who for long periods of the game’s history has been a leading light, had had a quiet time lately. But not anymore. When you can invite that humungously friendly family support to watch a three-hour game, with supreme facilities, and not just break crowd records but obliterate them, then you get what Fleming is saying. It will only get bigger and better. Meaning something else won’t.
Fifth ball: chucked, overstepped, and lethal in its intent.
And so it took a Renegade, Chris Gayle, to take centre stage next, sending another shockwave into the ether via a boundary line interview with a female journalist. The effect of the co
ntent delivered by Gayle was undeniable and created a din and a reaction so strong everyone took notice. It reminded us of our greatest wake-up in humanity—the need to see the end of blatant discrimination. Worst of all, it was live on air, rammed down a close-up camera, hitting us at the family home or a community gathering somewhere. Young children were watching, transfixed by the exciting energy that Fleming passionately expressed. This need never happen again around cricket. Instantly, I sided with the Stars above and condemned the Renegades.
Final delivery: normal light is fading, dinner is in the air, families gather. Lights are on to full effect.
Another T20 match is about to begin. Many of them now, all around the globe. All of them in properly bona fide competitions with a massive following throughout, often night upon night in prime-time television, always aiming to deliver a dose of fun and fever, and a winner crowned at the end. And cleverly, everyone has deemed that all is needed to make the ground full is a Family and Friend Pass, at forty or fifty bucks, ensuring folk come together. Just buy a pass and roll on up. By making up numbers to fill the pass, the admin continue to fill the fans seats and all benefit. And, as the younger wannabe man-fan readies himself for another sizzling fast head-high crowd-catch, the family flavour rises to fever pitch.
The future of cricket far into the night is safe and sound, by virtue of the game settling into proper competition, well marketed towards a family environment that ensures—no, guarantees—value for all. Meanwhile, a Test match, searching for connection to a fast-moving modern world, is played somewhere, but without enough context or support, and with dwindling hope for its own future. How can they who rule the game have done this?! Australia must act again if no one else will.
Twenty20—as Fleming said on 2nd January, 2016—created a wave and no one has got off the ride that might well have to sustain the game eternally. With a tweak here and there . . .
Martin Crowe removed his mask and put a creative mind to rest. By being so spiritually aware of what lay beyond the physical world, he became an irresistible conscience for those of us left behind. The game ignores his teachings at its peril.
What shall I most miss? The wisdom, the kindness, the childlike simplicity of the humour, the lack of ego, the rants—yes the rants, and how!—the high standards, the hard but fair marking, the counsel given and taken, the shared love of so many things that stretch heart and mind. Above them all is friendship.
Farewell, great thinker. Farewell, great player. Salute, dear friend.
RICHIE BENAUD, 1930–2015
‘The day Richie died’, first published on Cricinfo, 10 April 2015 He was father, uncle, brother and friend. He was our conscience and our guiding light. In an age of much madness, he made sense. He held firm when others doubted and let go when those around him needed to fly. His wise counsel was without compare, his kindness unconditional. There was something elemental about him, like the wind and the rain. And he was summer’s sunshine. But now he has gone.
Yes, Richie Benaud has gone. It has to be repeated to feel true. A flame that burned brightly for 84 years has flickered of late and now died. There is a darkness. If you have grown up watching cricket, you have grown up watching Richie Benaud. He was a constant in all our lives. The memories, the sights and sound of him, will live with us forever.
We, that is, the Channel Nine commentary team, last saw him in person at the Sydney Cricket Ground in November. When he arrived on the outfield in front of the Members Pavilion where we had gathered, there was a general shuffling. Unseen and virtually unheard of for a year since the car crash that all but ended his life in television, the news that he was to appear at the Nine Network’s launch of the ‘Sizzling Summer of Cricket’ was greeted with immense excitement.
The crash had damaged a couple of vertebrae, and the suggestion of surgery to the Benaud spine had lingered for most of the previous Australian summer. He made no fuss, of course, but admitted that he was far from ready to bowl 30 overs off the reel on a hot Sydney day. The surgery never happened. Apparently, a natural fusion was already taking place. Instead, the medics found some melanomas. Radiation and chemotherapy are not anyone’s game. The treatment had taken its toll. I suggested that it had been a rough year. ‘Roughish,’ he replied, with the understatement that has been a hallmark of his life.
Anyway, Richie turned up bang on time for the photo shoot and, though our joy in greeting him was uninhibited, we were all sad to see him so diminished. He carried himself with fortitude and typical grace, but he was clearly weak. It seems absurd that he retired from the commentary box in England ten years ago, but it is fact. On that early September day at the Oval in 2005, the producer of Channel 4’s cricket coverage, Gary Franses, had sent him across the ground to be alongside me and the others in our commentary team to say goodbye. Channel 4 had lost the rights to cricket in the UK.
The crowd rose to him with as much bonhomie as they had to the England team that, moments earlier, had won the Ashes after a summer of cricket that held the nation spellbound. Moved by their enthusiasm and warmth, Benaud shed a tear.
He has been good to us all: always by our side, a constant source of wisdom and encouragement. No one has sold the game of cricket with greater skill, few played it with greater flair.
When Mark Taylor switched from the playing field to the hallowed Nine Network commentary team, he called the fall of a key Australian wicket ‘a tragedy’. Benaud let it rest for a couple of hours before gently tapping Taylor on the shoulder and whispering, ‘Mark, the Titanic was a tragedy.’ Taylor said that Benaud had once used ‘tragedy’ while commentating himself. (Later during the summer, we heard it on an archive clip. Gold!)
His minimalism was a lifestyle, best illustrated in his television work both in front of the camera and behind the microphone: ‘West Indies cruising to victory here, all Carl Hooper has to do is keep his head as Shane Warne switches to bowl round the wicket into the rough outside leg-stump.’ At which point, Hooper charges down the pitch and has a mighty heave at Warne. The ball spins and catches the leading edge of Hooper’s bat. It is about to drop into Steve Waugh’s hands as Benaud says, ‘Oh, Carl,’ and nothing more.
The Benauds have been private people. He and his English wife, Daphne, live in an apartment in Coogee and watch the surf roll in each morning. After a long lay-off they had started their 40-minute sunrise walks again, not a minute more or less. These had given him relative strength and given her breathing space. They were inseparable. Her loss will be beyond pain. When Richie bought the drinks he would always say, ‘Don’t thank me, thank Mrs Benaud.’ She is a terrific woman who began life in and around the game as PA to Jim Swanton years ago but fell in love with the dashing former captain of Australia.
They lived in summer for 50 years, travelling across the world each April and September to cover the game for myriad networks and newspapers. Benaud’s crusades to English shores actually began as a player in 1953, when he came by boat with Lindsay Hassett’s touring Australians. They were at sea for five weeks and made their way around the shires for the five months that followed.
At the end of the summer of 2002, we took him to lunch at the Ivy in London. The room was full of the great and the good—Frost and Parkinson, Mrs Beckham, Michael Winner to name a few—but it went silent when he glided in. You should have seen the punters gawp. And the waiters, too. In general, Richie kept himself to himself, which is a powerful weapon. Because of it, public appearances were something of a parade.
His cricket can be summed up easily enough—a fine leg spinner, a dashing batsman, an excellent fieldsman but, above all, a brilliant and intuitive captain. Peter May brought a team of stellar names to Australia in 1958 and was beaten 4–0 by Benaud’s young adventurers. It was ever thus. Australia has cricket in its soul and Benaud will always remain a part of that soul.
I miss him already. I’m sure we all do. To have him back among us that day in November brought such pleasure. Bill Lawry was there too, up from Melbourne where he
looks after his beloved wife, Joy. Bill was very funny on the stage, telling Richie that the melanomas might be a bane now but, back then, with his hair flowing, shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist and gold chain sparkling in the sunshine, he looked a million dollars. They were quite a pair, Bill with his comedic talents and Richie with his natural dry wit.
The last time I saw him at all was on the telly in a quite brilliant Australia Day advertisement for Australian lamb. Captain Cook is at sea, on The Endeavour, one supposes. A mobile phone rings. He reaches into the pocket of his naval frock coat and answers it. The scene switches to Richie, tongs in hand, back home at the barbeque. ‘Cookie!’ says Richie. ‘G’day, Rich,’ says Captain Cook. ‘Fancy an Australia Day barbie round at my place?’ asks one great man of another. Cook looks to his second-in-command and then to some of the midshipmen around him and asks if they fancy it. Of course they do! Richie then calls various other iconic figures in Australia’s history, including Ned Kelly no less. They are all in. Have a look on YouTube, it is well worth it. The ad tells us much about Benaud’s sense of humour, timing and perspective. And it tells us the extent of the esteem in which he is held by all Australians.
When modern cricket folk talked of aggression and sledging as part of the game, Richie raised his eyebrows and cringed. Such attitudes were not part of his game, nor of the game played by Keith Miller, Garry Sobers, Ted Dexter or the Nawab of Pataudi. If modern cricketers want to do the Benaud legacy justice, they should reward his unwavering faith in their abilities and performance by ceasing such mean-spirited behaviour as of today. The day Richie died.
I just googled the word ‘dignity’. It says: ‘The state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect.’ There you go, that is Richie Benaud in a simple definition. From the first day of a glorious cricket career to his last as a universally admired and loved communicator of the most beautiful game, he was the very best. Our privilege was to have sat at his table.
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