93 Facts About Richie Benaud

1.

Richard Benaud was an Australian cricketer who played for New South Wales and the Australia national cricket team.

2.

Richie Benaud was a Test cricket all-rounder, blending leg spin bowling with lower-order batting aggression.

3.

Richie Benaud became the first player to reach 200 wickets and 2,000 runs in Test cricket, arriving at that milestone in 1963.

4.

Richie Benaud was born in Penrith, New South Wales, in 1930.

5.

Richie Benaud came from a cricket family, with his younger brother John Benaud going on to become an Australian Test cricketer.

6.

Richie Benaud's father Louis, a third-generation Australian of French Huguenot descent, was a leg spinner who played for Penrith District Cricket Club in Sydney Grade Cricket, gaining attention for taking all twenty wickets in a match against St Marys for 65.

7.

In November 1948, at the age of 18, Richie Benaud was selected for the New South Wales Colts, the state youth team.

8.

Richie Benaud spent two weeks in hospital for the surgery.

9.

Richie Benaud took the wicket of Queensland batsman Bill Brown in his third match of the season.

10.

Richie Benaud had more success with the bat, scoring 93 and narrowly missing a century against South Australia.

11.

Richie Benaud added another fifty and ended with 250 runs at 31.25.

12.

Richie Benaud was recalled for a match against the Englishmen.

13.

Richie Benaud scored 20 not out and was not called on to bowl in the second innings.

14.

Richie Benaud was cementing his position and was in the senior team for four consecutive matches even with the Test players available.

15.

Richie Benaud was selected for an Australian XI match against England, in what was effectively a trial for Test selection, but suffered a chipped bone in his thumb.

16.

Richie Benaud was given a chance against the visiting team when New South Wales played them in Sydney after the First Test.

17.

Richie Benaud scored his maiden first-class century, 117 against South Australia, in the next match, two years after falling short of the milestone by seven runs.

18.

Richie Benaud went on to dismiss tail-ender Alf Valentine for his first Test wicket, conceding 14 runs from 4.3 overs.

19.

Richie Benaud suffered a smashed gum and a severely cut top lip when a square cut by John Waite in the Third Test against South Africa at the Sydney Cricket Ground hit him in the face while he was fielding at short gully.

20.

Richie Benaud married after the match and had to mumble his wedding vows through a swathe of bandages.

21.

Richie Benaud made 124 runs at 20.66, making double figures in four of seven innings, but was unable to capitalise on his starts, with a top score of 45.

22.

Richie Benaud had been seventh and eighth in the domestic run-scoring and wicket-taking aggregates for the season, but was yet to convert this into international performance.

23.

Richie Benaud put on 167 in a partnership with Alan Davidson, the first collaboration between the pair, who would later go on to lead Australia's bowling in the last five years of their career.

24.

Richie Benaud managed only eight runs in four innings in the first two Tests, and having taken only two wickets for 136 runs was dropped for the Third.

25.

Richie Benaud was recalled immediately for the Fourth Test, but was dropped for the Fifth after managing seven runs in his only innings and going wicketless.

26.

Richie Benaud ended the Test series with 15 runs at 3.00 and two wickets at 87.00.

27.

Richie Benaud contributed significantly with both bat and ball in New South Wales' Sheffield Shield triumph, the first of nine consecutive titles.

28.

Richie Benaud then finished the summer strongly, and ended the season with 811 runs at 62.38 and 35 wickets at 30.54.

29.

Richie Benaud secured his place after scoring 125 against Queensland at the start of the season, although his lead-up form in two matches against England for his state and an Australian XI was not encouraging.

30.

Richie Benaud made 113 against the touring side for the Prime Minister's XI.

31.

Richie Benaud had contributed 246 runs at 41 and taken wickets steadily to total 18 at 26.94.

32.

Richie Benaud's fielding, in particular at gully and short leg, was consistently of a high standard, in particular his acrobatic catch to dismiss Colin Cowdrey.

33.

Richie Benaud was unable to maintain the standards he had set in the West Indies, contributing little apart from the Lord's Test.

34.

Richie Benaud ended the series with 200 runs at 25 and eight wickets at 42.5.

35.

Richie Benaud had managed, in the 14 Tests since then, 559 runs at 27.95 and 67 wickets at 24.98.

36.

Richie Benaud took part in Australia's tour of New Zealand from February to March 1957.

37.

Richie Benaud was the top wicket-taker on the tour, with 32 wickets at 19.31, and Australia's top wicket-taker in the three matches against New Zealand, with 15 wickets at 21.73.

38.

Early in the tour, when the team visited Timaru to pay a minor match, Richie Benaud went to a pharmacy to see if he could get something to soothe his spinning-fingers, which had been torn by his spinning action for many years.

39.

Richie Benaud scored 817 runs including four centuries, two of them in Test matches.

40.

Richie Benaud had been a major contributor to the series win, scoring 329 runs at 54.83 and taking 30 wickets at 21.93, establishing himself as one of the leading leg spinners of the modern era.

41.

Harvey and Richie Benaud had been captains of their respective states until Harvey moved in the same season for employment purposes from Victoria to New South Wales and became Richie Benaud's deputy.

42.

Richie Benaud had little prior leadership experience, and faced the task of recovering the Ashes from an England team which had arrived in Australia as favourites.

43.

Richie Benaud contributed 132 runs at 26.4 and 31 wickets at the low average of 18.83, as well as his shrewd and innovative captaincy.

44.

Richie Benaud then led Australia on its first full tour of the Indian subcontinent, playing three and five Tests against Pakistan and India respectively.

45.

Richie Benaud had contributed 91 runs at 15.16 and 29 wickets at 19.59.

46.

The first two seasons of the Richie Benaud captaincy had been a resounding success, with Australia winning eight, drawing four and losing only one Test.

47.

Richie Benaud's personal form was a major factor in this success.

48.

Richie Benaud took over when Australian cricket was in a low phase with a young team.

49.

Richie Benaud hit a ball into the covers and the pair attempted a quick single when a direct hit from Joe Solomon saw Davidson run out.

50.

Australia needed six runs from the final over, in which Richie Benaud was caught and the last two wickets fell to run outs while attempting the winning run.

51.

The First Test at Edgbaston was drawn with Richie Benaud taking three wickets.

52.

Richie Benaud made 1 in the second before a last-wicket partnership between Davidson and Graham McKenzie of 98 yielded a defendable target.

53.

Richie Benaud had a poor series with the bat, scoring 45 runs at 9, but was more successful with the ball, taking 15 wickets at 32.53.

54.

Richie Benaud finished the first-class tour with 627 runs and 61 wickets at 23.54.

55.

Richie Benaud was appointed an OBE in that year and in 1962 was named as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.

56.

Richie Benaud led New South Wales throughout a dominant season, winning the Sheffield Shield with 64 of the 80 possible points.

57.

Richie Benaud was the leading wicket-taker of the season with 47 at 17.97.

58.

At one stage, New South Wales were six wickets down with less than 150 runs scored, but Richie Benaud refused to attempt to defend for a draw.

59.

Richie Benaud made 140, in a seventh-wicket partnership of 255 in just 176 minutes, an Australian record that still stands.

60.

Richie Benaud was another contender with 219 wickets, but it was Statham who broke the record and Richie Benaud had to be content with breaking Ray Lindwall's Australian record of 228 Test wickets.

61.

Richie Benaud started the series with seven wickets and a half century as the First Test in Brisbane was drawn.

62.

Richie Benaud's batting was reliable, with 227 runs at 32.47.

63.

Richie Benaud did not bowl Meckiff from the other end, and at the end of the match Meckiff announced his retirement.

64.

Richie Benaud's batting had been steady though with 231 runs at 33, but his bowling was less so, taking 12 wickets at 37.42.

65.

Richie Benaud was awarded life membership by the New South Wales Cricket Association, but he returned it in protest in 1970 when his younger brother John was removed from the captaincy.

66.

Richie Benaud's success was based on his ability to attack, his tactical boldness and his ability to extract more performance from his players, in particular Davidson.

67.

Richie Benaud was known for his unbuttoned shirt, and raised eyebrows with his on-field exuberance.

68.

Richie Benaud embraced his players when opposition wickets fell, something that was uncommon at the time.

69.

Richie Benaud was not a large spinner of the ball, but he was known for his ability to extract substantial bounce from the surface.

70.

Richie Benaud had the tendency to bowl around the wicket at a time when he was one of the first players to do so; it had an influence on spin bowlers like Shane Warne and Ashley Giles.

71.

Richie Benaud was regarded as one of the finest close-fielders of his era, either at gully or in a silly position.

72.

Richie Benaud's control was admirable, and when Benaud gets a batsman in trouble he rarely if ever gives him a loose one.

73.

Richie Benaud keeps him pinned down, probing and probing until the victim is well and truly enmeshed.

74.

Richie Benaud took up a journalism position with the News of the World, beginning as a police roundsman before becoming a sports columnist.

75.

Richie Benaud openly criticised the actions by the Chappell brothers in the post-match reaction to the underarm bowling incident of 1981, proving his moral integrity far outweighed his unconditional patriotism for Australia.

76.

Richie Benaud vacated the commentary booth when New Zealand was about to clinch a test victory at Lord's in 1999, allowing former New Zealand captain-turned-commentator Ian Smith to call the famous victory of his compatriots.

77.

Richie Benaud helped to design a computer-based parody of himself available for download off Channel 4's website called "Desktop Richie".

78.

On Channel 4's live commentary, Benaud often made sarcastic comments regarding the advertisement of Desktop Richie.

79.

In 2004, Richie Benaud starred in a series of television advertisements for the Australian Tourism Commission, aimed at promoting Australia as a tourist destination.

80.

Richie Benaud appeared in Richie Benaud's Greatest XI, a video in which he chooses his own team.

81.

Richie Benaud became a staunch advocate of cricket being available on free-to-view TV.

82.

Richie Benaud chose to end his British commentary career, which spanned more than 42 years, when the rights to broadcast live Test match cricket were lost by Channel 4 to the subscription broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting.

83.

Richie Benaud stated he would spend the Northern Hemisphere summer in Britain writing, and would continue working for the Nine Network in Australia.

84.

Richie Benaud's distinctive speaking style has been frequently parodied on the Australian comedy series Comedy Inc and The Twelfth Man.

85.

On 18 February 2009, during a radio interview, Richie Benaud announced that he would be retiring from television commentary.

86.

Richie Benaud was the accompaniment of an Australian summer, his voice was even more present than the chirping of the cicadas in our suburbs and towns, and that voice, tragically, is still.

87.

Richie Benaud married Marcia Lavender in 1953 and had two sons, Greg and Jeffery, from this marriage; he divorced Marcia in 1967.

88.

In October 2013, Richie Benaud crashed his vintage 1965 Sunbeam Alpine into a wall while driving near his home in Coogee, a beachside suburb in Sydney's east.

89.

In November 2014, at age 84, Richie Benaud announced that he had been diagnosed with skin cancer.

90.

Richie Benaud was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1961 for services to cricket.

91.

Richie Benaud was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.

92.

In November 2015, Richie Benaud became an honouree at Bradman Foundation, having been a long-serving patron in his life.

93.

In October 2018, Richie Benaud became the 40th Legend in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.