flagwavingThere may seem to be no obvious link between Richie Benaud, the great Australian cricketer and TV commentator who has died at the age of 84, and Ed Miliband’s performance in the recent ITV leaders’ debate.
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| Richie Benaud in 1961 |
and speaking directly to the viewer at home. When Benaud first caught the audience’s eye on TV in the 1960s and 70s, using that distinctive stare with one eye slightly narrowed, he was teased by TV critics and questioned by directors. But it rapidly became what media trainers – including Miliband’s – advise people to try.The approach, typically of Benaud, was a technical solution. Cricket is a side-on game, with batting and bowling both executed in profile
, but television is logically a face-on form. If newscasters and presenters talked straight at the viewer, Benaud calculated, then wouldn’t it be more inclusive if a pundit also did?He was the first ex-player to become as good a broadcaster as he had been a cricketer. The possibilities of cricket commentary had been defined, at opposite ends of the spectrum, on Radio 4’s Test Match Special by Brian Johnston, who had the instincts of a clown, and John Arlott, with the soul of a poet.
Benaud, unusually, could do both comedy and poignancy. When Viv Richards was smashing sixes over the stands, he might say: “Just trying to remember where I parked the car.” A streaker at Lord’s jumping over the stumps, balls just clearing bails, was glossed as a “brief interruption for athletics”.
But he was also capable of poetic moments. In 1978, when David Gower – only 21 years old and looking even younger, with his frizz of blond hair – was 99 not out against New Zealand and facing strike, Benaud said, “And now every sporting mother in England will whisper a silent prayer”, his already soft voice theatrically lowered a little further. In those words, an obvious sentiment – that it would be nice if he got his century – beautifully caught the Rupert Brooke-like moment of a frailly beautiful boy on the brink of history. The prayer was answered.
That unusual form of words, though, reflected Benaud’s unique position within English sport broadcasting. He channelled the drama of Gower through the mothers of the country partly because the default tone of his BBC colleagues (“come on, son, we all want you to get four”) was unavailable to him as an Australian outsider.
There had long been a tradition of a pundit from the overseas side being invited into English commentary boxes: Sunil Gavaskar when India were playing, Australia’s Alan McGilvray in the Test Match Special box for Ashes tours. But Benaud, uniquely, spent every Australian winter working for English TV (first the BBC, then Channel 4), regardless of who the tourists were.
This spared him from having to side with the home team, although it is a tribute to his character that he was objective even when the Australians were playing in England. During what was probably the most unlikely Ashes Test match ever – Headingley in 1981, when Ian Botham and Bob Willis
turned what seemed a certain crushing defeat into narrow victory – the Test Match Special wireless commentary was batting for Blighty, reflecting chewed nails at the ends of arms hurled into the air, while the language and delivery of Benaud, on television, reflected every swing to either side. A theatre critic, rather than an actor.His authority on that occasion was helped by the fact that he had played a key part in the only previous Test match of equivalent tension: the “tied Test” between West Indies and Australia in 1961, at the time the only completed match in Test match history (and still only one of two) in which the scores came out entirely equal.
Yet, despite his own remarkable achievements in the game, he never, unlike many players turned observers, fell into the trap of implying that a general decline had been triggered by his retirement. A great spin bowler himself, he showed no resentment in seeing successors, such as Australia’s Shane Warne
, tweak his methods and challenge his records. When Warne dismissed England’s Mike Gatting with a delivery that seemed to defy the laws of aerodynamics, Benaud immediately called it “the ball of the century”, which phrase has entered dictionaries of cricket quotations. He used his journalistic eye (he had trained as a newspaper reporter) in spotting that the baffled departing batsman had asked the umpire if he could explain what had just happened.He was equally generous to fledgling broadcasters: Michael Atherton, who came under Benaud’s tutelage at Channel 4, has audibly followed the model of soft-voiced commentary with judicious silences and always knows where the camera is during discussions.
Another mark of Benaud’s integrity was that, while open to most innovations in cricket (even the controversial 20-over thrashes), he was a principled traditionalist in the matter of televised cricket. In 2006, when the English Cricket Board transferred screen rights from Channel 4 to Sky, Benaud ended his television career in the UK because of his belief that, to encourage younger generations to take up the game, matches must be available on free-to-air TV.
His last piece of public commentary was doubly poignant. When the Australian player Philip Hughes was killed in a freak batting accident last November, Benaud recorded a tribute: “A boy, just beginning, 25 years of age, baggy green number 408. His father’s best mate, son, brother, fighter, friend, inspiration. Phillip Hughes, for ever rest in peace, son.”
When writing and speaking those words, Benaud was already seriously ill and must have known that his own obituaries were close
, although had the consolation of being given almost six decades longer than Hughes and achieving great careers in both cricket and television. Another solace is that, as cricket is more concerned than most sports with the history and the breaking of individual records, clips will be called from the archives and Benaud’s voice – wry, kind, incisive – will be heard again.His much-quoted advice on the art of commentary was that it was important to know when to shut up. However, every fan of cricket and of broadcasting will lament that he finally has.
