It's time to say good bye, Richie Benaud

The demise of Richie Benaud brings back memories of a vintage flavour of cricket. Always a moderniser of the game, the man who had the most distinctive and authoritative voice on cricket, however, never claimed that cricket was better in his time.

Benaud became popular in our early days through the social and collective viewing of highlights of foreign tours of the Indian side. Television sets were yet to graduate to the level of being products of mass consumption then and the ordinary others would flock into the living rooms of a lucky few to have a glimpse of how the foreign turfs and the cricket watchers looked like, besides the match.

If Benaud's voice was that of cricket itself then the lanky man sporting the white coat, Dickie Bird was the conscience keeper of the game. The gentleman's game was yet to be commercialised and its flavour was more of merrymaking than moneymaking.

 The flamboyant elegance of Tony Greig, who kneeled down before a full packed Eden Gardens in 1977 to appease a crowd rendered restless by the home side's disastrous performance against the MCC, is a far cry in this age of cut throat competition and stress, when every action has a commercial value attached to it. So is the orthodox spin bowling by the likes of Derek Underwood and Bishen Bedi, when the bowler would have the luxury of experimenting with the turns and the flights despite being punished to the ropes. 

Cricket has become more instantaneous these days and the five-day carnival called test matches are like the vintage car rallies. Like the English summers the Indian winters then were a time for holidaying, to relax and sink into laziness, and cricket was the vehicle to transport one from the reality to the dream world of fantasy and romanticism.

When Pakistan was touring England in 2001, I came across an English farmer from Essex who has to his credit the rare privilege of watching all first class and test matches being played at the Lord's since 1961. Having a bite of his cheese and cucumber sandwich, an English delight and is also allegedly liked by the Queen, and sipping his Sherry, the middle-aged farmer told me how he picked up this trait from his forefathers and wanted to carry it on till he went to the grave. His son, however, was more into the shorter format of the game, he told me. A generational thing, some would suppose. 

Despite our fantasy with the yesteryears, it would be unfair to infer that cricket was better in the bygone days, especially on a day when a moderniser to the core Richie Benaud said good bye to his viewers for the last time.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant. 
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com 
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