Richie Benaud OBE (1930–2015), cricketer and cricket commentator, played sixty-three Tests for Australia between 1952 and 1964. In the twenty-eight tests in which he served as captain, Australia did not lose a series. A leg-spinning all-rounder, in 1963 Benaud became the first Test player to complete the career double of 200 wickets and 2000 runs. He ended his Test career with 248 wickets at 27.03 and 2201 runs at 24.45. He remains one of only ten Australians to have scored more than 10,000 runs and taken more than 500 wickets in first-class cricket, in which he represented New South Wales 73 times from 1948 to 1964. Benaud began his broadcasting career on BBC Radio in 1960 and moved across to BBC Television three years later. The much-imitated ‘voice of cricket’ joined Australia’s Channel Nine in 1977; and Britain’s Channel Four in 1999. Named an OBE in 1961, Benaud was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2007 and the ICC Hall of Fame in 2009. The conclusion of Benaud’s commentating career came following a diagnosis of skin cancer in late 2014. He died in Sydney in April 2015, aged 84.
A cropped version of this photograph appears as the frontispiece of the 1961 edtion of Cricket the Australian Way, by Jack Pollard.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2005
© Michael McQuillan's Classic Photographs
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