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Saturday, 25 April 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Media – both electronic and print – gave wide coverage to Richie Benaud, the much respected Australian cricketer, captain and commentator. While the electronic media used extensive footage on his career, the newspapers devoted several pages with columnists discussing his contribution to the game.
The Weekend Australian devoted most of the front page to Benaud and got the country’s best cricket writers and commentators to pay tribute to “the face of cricket” in several pages.
The story on page one captured the mood worldwide on the news of Benaud’s death. “Flags flew half-mast on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and at cricket grounds the world over, pilgrims attended his beckoning SCG statue, and in all corners of the globe players and fans – young and old – realised that the sound of summer had been extinguished,” cricket writer Peter Lalor said. “Wherever the game of cricket is played, people yesterday (10 April) stopped to remember Richie Benaud and contemplate what has been lost and is left by his passing. It is immense.”
Benaud was described as “the former Australian captain, brilliant all-rounder and godfather of the commentary box.”
“Voice of summer is silent” is how the Sunday Times devoted a double-page spread to Benaud who died, aged 84, after a battle with skin cancer. “The captain of Australia who became the beloved voice of cricket for fans all around the world has, as he might have said, fallen only 16 short of his century,” wrote senior sports journalist Grantlee Kieza. 
His introductory paragraph stated that for more than half a century, Richie Benaud’s voice was the soundtrack of a seemingly endless summer. “He was like a much loved uncle who came to visit during holidays and made us all feel better for his arrival. For those 50 or so years his melodious voice – with its clipped enunciation, wry one-liners and lauded pauses – was like a refreshing breeze as he spent Australia’s scorching months behind the microphone, becoming part of our furniture, part of our lives.”
“His luscious delivery of the word ‘marvellous’ or the delicious staccato pronunciation of scores like 2-222 rolled from the tongue like treacle, inspiring imitators from Perth to Bangladesh,” he recollected.
He summed up Benaud’s personality thus: “ Meticulous on his appearance but never haughty, shrewd and never cruel, elegant without being condescending, Benaud’s passion for cricket with all its colour and chaos, its nuances and nous, inspired millions.”
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot offered a State funeral for a great Australian, a man lauded more for his humility and understatement than for his countless triumphs during his 84 years. “There would be very few Australians who have not passed a summer in the company of Richie Benaud. His voice was even more present than the chirping of the cicadas in our suburbs and towns,” he added.
The offer of a State funeral was politely refused by wife Daphne saying that Benaud wanted a private funeral with only the immediate family members present.
On a personal note, I recollect how I had a rare opportunity of sitting in the Press Box at the Edgbaston grounds in July 1963 alongside Benaud and Keith Miller, another great Australian cricketer of the Don Bradman era. They were newspaper columnists then and were covering the West Indies Tour to England, led by Frank Worrel. I was in the UK on a Commonwealth Press Union Fellowship and had just gone to work on the Birmingham Post.
On the first day as I went to office and called on the Editor (he was also the Managing Director), he gave me a pass to the Press Box and said “Don’t see us for the next six days.” I bought a copy of ‘The Commonwealth Book of Cricket’ which I preserve to this day with autographs of most of the players. I got Benaud’s signature on a photograph in the book where he and England captain Ted Dexter were about to celebrate, with Dexter opening a bottle of champagne.
