Benaud wants to retire next year

Richie Benaud will retire from television commentary next year, ending a second career spanning almost 50 years. He became the voice of cricket in Australia and, previously, England, and was as much a part of summer as a lounge-room sofa.

"I'll be doing Australian cricket next year, 2010, but I don't do any television at all anywhere else now and when I finish next year, I'll be doing other things," Benaud, 78, told Macquarie Radio.

Benaud moved into television commentary soon after retiring from international cricket in 1964 - he took 248 wickets in 63 Tests - and joined the Channel Nine team in 1977. He soon became an icon of sports broadcasting for his crisp style and dry humour - and sharp dress sense. In 2005 English fans mourned the end of 42 years of Benaud's commentary in the country after the free-to-air Channel 4's contract ended with the ECB.

The same year Benaud was voted Australia's most popular commentator in a poll conducted by the Wisden Cricketer and Cricinfo. At the time he said he wanted to continue writing books, which he had begun doing long before making a career in television.

"We all revered Kerry Packer, and he revered Richie," the Nine chief executive David Gyngell said in the Sydney Morning Herald. "The word 'legend' gets thrown around a bit but in television in the last 50 years there's probably been half a dozen, and he's one of them.

"He's had a tremendous influence on the people around him, his work colleagues and the class of the network. Kerry Packer identified that in 1978. He knew what Richie was going to do, and he's continued to do it."

Benaud has a handshake agreement with Nine. "If Richie Benaud tells you something, it always happens," Gyngell said. "He can come and go as he pleases as far as I'm concerned."

Gyngell said Mark Nicholas, the former Hampshire captain, was the heir to Benaud's chair. "We've been working towards that, and he has been doing it the last two years," he said. "He opens and closes the show, and that's what Richie wanted."