The panache of Benaud

Panache. It is a difficult attribute to define, but it is easy to recognise in a person, albeit it is very rare. Older readers may remember, Maurice Chevalier had panache. So did Cary Grant, and for Hindi movie buffs there was Dev Anand. JFK had it, in large measure. Greg Norman is full of panache, as was René Lacoste and Garry Sobers. At least the equal of all of them, in the panache-scales, was Richie Benaud.

He had panache all his life; he might have been born with it! I was about 8, and had just begun being interested in cricket, when my father sat me down and told me how Richie had turned a losing situation into a win, almost on his own, and with a (for then) completely revolutionary tactic. He went around the wicket to right-handed Englishmen and bowled leg breaks into the rough, grabbed a few wickets in no time from a befuddled English team, and hey presto! A team that was cruising to victory slid to quick defeat.

One photo in The Statesman in Delhi was all that was needed to stamp the man's panache on this little boy. A slim wavy haired bowler in delivery stride, shirt unbuttoned to just-over-the-navel, devilishly handsome and sexily athletic, wrist cocked over the ball, spinning the Englishmen to a bewildering defeat: this little boy had a hero for life!

Soon came THAT Test series, West Indies in Australia, 1960-61. A tied Test! A series, test after test, of two teams with……panache! A series that redefined Test cricket, that has gone into legend. Made possible by two men of panache, Benaud and Frank Worrell.

The years rolled on, and Benaud grew into another role in cricket - as the Voice of the game. No, that is limiting - it does not include the unusual but oh-so-stylish cream jacket, the wavy silvery hair, the laconic turn of humour, the crisp summation of dramas, the erudite description of a strategic flaw - all with an abundance of grace, a complete lack of rancor, a depth of analytical insight and…..yes, panache!

Make no mistake, Richie was a hardened professional, as a player and as a commentator. His great gift was that he humanised that hardness, so that while there was a great display of skill and hard work and commitment and a will-to-be-the-best, it was all couched in courtesy, dry humour, a sense of enjoyment, an obsessed apathy for bias, and a deep desire to communicate joy to the average spectator or listener or viewer.

They don't make too many men like Richie. They never did. They never will.

And that, in essence, is what makes his legacy invaluable to us all. RIP Richie. You are a sweetheart!