Richie Benaud will always be one of the most important people in my life, and it just happened to be a three-time coincidence.
The first was at Mosman Oval in my first game as Mosman first grade captain, walking out to toss with the Australian, NSW, and Cumberland captain Richie Benaud.
I was so nervous as the youngest first grade skipper among the 16 Sydney clubs, I could hardly breathe, but Richie made it as easy as possible with his congratulations and encouragement.
That was 52 years ago, but the memory of those moments are as vivid as if it was yesterday.
The second time Richie surfaced was by far the most telling.
I was invited to play in Australia’s first pro-am golf tournament at the Bonnie Doon course in Sydney’s east.
The other amateur in the group was Bill Casey, the racing editor of The Sun, and during the round he asked me what I thought of the paper’s cricket coverage.
The next morning Con Simons, the crusty sporting editor of The Sun, rang me at 7am, and all he said was, “Like your ideas son, see you at the Journalists Club at noon”, and hung up. I hadn’t said a word.
The upshot of that meeting was I started to write a weekly column called “Straight Hit” that covered the amusing and different angles on the great game.
Late in the season, journalist pay rates were given a hike, but Fairfax dropped their journos a grade to pay roughly the same as before the rise.
Richie, who was the senior sportswriter with Ernie Christensen, walked out and went down the road to the The Daily Mirror, as a massive bonus for the afternoon newspaper opposition.
At 3pm the day Richie walked, Con Simons rang again with another short sharp call, “You start full-time tomorrow at 4am writing cricket and rugby with Norman Tasker, see you then”, and hung up.
I was working at the AMP at the time, and ran from Circular Quay to Broadway, arriving just in time to catch Con before he left.
And that’s where my media career began, thanks to Richie Benaud.
A decade later Helen Ives, the owner of the Australian franchise of ‘This Is Your Life’, and the former wife of singing legend Burl Ives, rang and asked me to do the research and write the script for Richie’s ‘This Is Your Life’.
That was the ultimate privilege to be able to thank the now 84-year-old cricketer-commentator-writer for his support, by doing his life justice in the Channel 7 series.
Now, like all cricket-lovers around the world, I wish Richie a full recovery from the car smash of 13 months ago, and his current battle with skin cancer, he deserves nothing less.
For what you see in Richie Benaud, is what you get.
He’s a gentleman to the marrow of his bones, a legend in every possible way, and he’s been greatly missed on Channel Nine’s cricket coverage since the car accident.
But he’s lucky to have wife Daphne by his side, one of the most organised people I have ever known.
She had to be to keep up with Richie’s highly successful, but hectic, life for decades.
Icon.
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