RIP Richie Benaud
- Thread starter Matt26
- Start date
From Lawrence Booth's "Notes By the Editor" section in the recently-released 2016 Wisden Almanack:
"Banter was not for Richie Benaud. Instead, there were two measures of his unique place in cricket commentary. The first was the number of colleagues who, following his death, said how often they tried to bear in mind his dictum about speaking only when you can add to the picture. The second was the number of colleagues who actually managed to put his dictum into practice. For it was easier said – or, in Benaud’s case, not said – than done. This is where cricket will miss him. Not because he always made for great TV: viewers often longed to know what he really thought, and his perennial irritation about the front-foot no-ball law proved he could do trenchant opinion. It will miss him because his pithiness balanced out the tactic of talking more and more about less and less until everything has been said about nothing. Benaud has gone now, and with him his pact with the cricket-watching public, who are a lot brighter than most commentators evidently imagine. "
"Banter was not for Richie Benaud. Instead, there were two measures of his unique place in cricket commentary. The first was the number of colleagues who, following his death, said how often they tried to bear in mind his dictum about speaking only when you can add to the picture. The second was the number of colleagues who actually managed to put his dictum into practice. For it was easier said – or, in Benaud’s case, not said – than done. This is where cricket will miss him. Not because he always made for great TV: viewers often longed to know what he really thought, and his perennial irritation about the front-foot no-ball law proved he could do trenchant opinion. It will miss him because his pithiness balanced out the tactic of talking more and more about less and less until everything has been said about nothing. Benaud has gone now, and with him his pact with the cricket-watching public, who are a lot brighter than most commentators evidently imagine. "
