Mourning everyone: no more Richie

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What are we going to do without Richie? It's bad enough having to adjust to the prospect of life after Channel 4, but the retirement of Richie Benaud from British broadcasting, for the wholly understandable reason that he refuses to work for Sky, has hit cricket fans hard. For the last time, it seems, we have heard him say "Four from the moment it left the bat", or, when the ball was missing leg stump by a foot, "I'll leave you to make your own minds up about that one". Nostalgia kicks in swiftly these days, and before he's even on the plane to Sydney we have all been looking back with unnatural fondness to the Richie years. Publishers know this, which is why books like this come into existence. Many of the middle-aged men buying it at my local bookshop were apparently in tears, although the rather steep cover price may have had something to do with that.

Richie has written many books over the years, and you may well have read one or two of them. I suspect it's impossible to follow the game with any enthusiasm and not read at least a couple of Benaud books. They are strangely tempting, promising as they do the authority and judiciousness of the World's Greatest Commentator leavened with his bone-dry humour and terrific anecdotes about Tony Lewis and Peter West. Which is to some extent what you get, as most of them are essentially the same book updated. The exception was 1998's Anything But An Autobiography, which was the most reluctant memoir in sporting history. Richie doesn't want to talk about himself, he wants to talk about cricket, with which, thank heaven, he remains completely enthralled.

For what sets Richie Benaud apart from his contemporaries - and also, let's face it, a fair number of people much younger than him - is that he consistently welcomes change. He sees the modern game as an enhancement on former glories, not as a disappointing echo of them. He esteems one-day cricket, thinks technology is marvellous and adores the aggressive batting style of modern Test sides. Asked, because he has seen or participated in more Tests than anyone else, to nominate the best cricketing period he had lived through, he says that the 20 months between May 2003 and the end of January 2005 pretty much beat everything. As it happens, the end of January 2005 was when he finished writing this book, so we can assume that the recent Ashes series would be up there as well. Test cricket has never been more fun: an inspiring assertion, and you can't imagine Fred Trueman saying it.

Richie remains a journalist to his bones, and this is a journalist's book: topical, snappy and written without much fuss. He is not the greatest stylist, but as consolation every page is infused with the flavour of his commentary. Whenever he calls something "ordinary", meaning "atrocious", you want to cheer. Reading it is a little like taking a Radox bath: it's wonderfully relaxing, and cheers you up for no reason you can put your finger on. May his retirement be long and fruitful. Morning everyone.