4 Sep 2021 Written By Matthew Eastley

Be like Richie

To say we were obsessed with Richie Benaud in my year at St Mary’s would be an understatement – we loved the great Australian doyen of the cricketing commentary box.

He was a master of his craft and back in the 70s provided an unbeatable partnership with his fellow ‘man of the mic’, Jim Laker.

Tony Walton (from Farnborough) and Simon Pajak (from Erith) both did (and still do) fantastic impressions of the great man, right down to the slightly closed right eye and the Ozzie delivery through rounded lips.

“Don’t even bother looking for that one,” Mr Walton would say in a Sydney drawl after the late, great Danny Kelleher despatched another hapless bowler to the boundary on the top field cricket square.

“No point trying to stop that one,” retorted Mr Pajak in a similar accent: “That’s gone straight into the confectionary stall and out again.”

To my mind, Benaud’s genius was often not what he did say, but what he didn’t. To extend the cricketing analogy, in commentating terms he was the master of the ‘leave.’

I recall once between overs in a Test Match, the TV camera focused on a man wearing a jester’s hat, clearly the worse for wear after one too many lagers in the searing summer sun. He was slumped in his seat, sleeping, mouth agape with the jester’s hat just staying on his head while somebody tried to balance a sweet wrapper on top of him.

The millions watching sat waiting for a classic Benaud one-liner. But it never came. He just left it. He instinctively knew anything he said could not enhance the image. Like the batsman choosing not to play a superb away-swinger it was a masterful leave.

I’m actually building up for a terrible, clunky segue here. If you comment on something, does that make you a commentator? I’m going to say it does.

So, you can now, should you wish, add a comment to any article that appears on this website.

If you don’t wish to, then of course, just like Richie, or even Boycott at his best, you can simply opt to ‘leave’ it.