Shane Warne: Richie Benaud captain of commentary team

Nov 11, 2014

Shane Warne and others cricket legends came in salutation of Richie Benaud by calling him the leader of the Channel 9 commentary team. Benaud who’s one of the earliest player turned commentators has been associated with channel 9 for over a whopping 40 years, naturally its emotional news when you hear that the voice of Australian Cricket even world cricket may no longer be heard on TV owing skin cancer. Former cricketers and colleagues have hailed him their ‘captain’ in unanimity according to the official Cricket Australia (CA) Website.

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For Benaud’s long standing partner in the commentary box, Bill Lawry he was not just a captain in metaphorical terms but incidentally Lawry made his debut under the astute leadership of Benaud. For Warne Benaud’s been a massive influence, while he had a lot to learn on the field and even listening to him before he was on the field for Australia and in the following years in the commentary box.

Warne was quoted saying, “let the pictures do the talking’ – sometimes I talk too much, But he taught me ‘don’t tell the viewer what they can already see, describe why it’s happening’ and I like to think I try and do that most of the time.It’s so much more than all that too, he’s just one of the great men.Richie’s been fantastic ever since I’ve started playing international cricket, and when I was watching cricket before that.

I’ve known Richie for 25, nearly 30 years and he taught me a lot with my leg-spin bowling.He used to comment a few times and I would ring him and say ‘what do you see Rich?’ and we’d have a good chat about leg-spin bowling.And then on the commentary, I first started [commentating] on Channel Nine in 1996 when I had my finger operation and I’ve been with Channel Nine since 1993, so it’s been 21 years and it’s always lovely to listen to Rich and to pick his brain about stuff.”