Benaud had had a successful Test career (as player and then captain of the Australian cricket side) prior to becoming one of the first former cricketers to take up commentary.
He retired as a cricketer in 1964 and almost immediately joined BBC Radio as a cricket commentator. He also happens to be the only cricket commentator to have survived and thrived across the many trends and changes that swept across international cricket — and along with it, the dynamics of cricket commentary — in the last 40 years.
For example, he began his career as a commentator in an era when commentators were largely cricket enthusiasts (mostly journalists and non-cricketing professionals) with little or no experience as Test or even first-class players.
Though most of them were highly articulate and knowledgeable about the game and many became almost as famous as the players, it was Benaud who (from the early 1970s onwards) began to add a new dimension to the art of cricket commentary by not only commentating on what was going on the field during a game, but also what was (possibly) going on in the players’ heads.
Richie Benaud pioneers new style
Being a former player, Benaud began to comment on the strategic and technical aspects of teams, players and individual matches. This was immediately picked up by the batch of Australian commentators who joined the profession from the late 1970s and were all former cricketers.
Former Australian captains, Ian Chappell, Keith Stackpole and Bill Lawry further upped the bar set by Benaud.
But even by the early 1990s, when cricket commentators were almost always former Test stars discussing the strategies and technical dimensions of bowling, batting and fielding; Benaud kept pace with the evolving ways of cricket commentary and till this day remains to be one of the most popular and respected commentators.
It's interesting to note that though Benaud has survived the many changes and tides that have swept across the vocation of professional cricket commentary, many of his contemporaries who were equally famous at one time or the other, have largely faded away.
The changes witnessed in how one commentated on a cricket game (for TV and radio) were most detrimental to commentators who (unlike Benaud) had not been professional cricketers.
Many famous voices in this respect eventually faded away once (by the late 1980s) cricket commentary started to become the sole domain of former cricket stars.
One of the most famous voices was that of England’s John Arllot (whose career as a commentator began in 1946 and lasted till 1981). He exited the arena in the early 1980s, around the time when former Test stars had begun entering this profession.
The only non-player commentators who have successfully survived the trend are the veteran West Indian, Tony Cosier (who’s been commentating since 1958), and India’s Harsha Bhogle (who arrived in the early 1990s).
English was and remains to be the universal language of cricket commentary, even though from the late 1970s onwards, it had begun to be provided in local languages in India (Hindi), Pakistan (Urdu), Bangladesh (Bangla), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese) and South Africa (Afrikaan).
The early years of Omar Kureishi and Jamsheed Markear
Cricket commentary in Pakistan has evolved the same way as it has in other cricket-playing nations. Two of the earliest well known commentators in the country were Omar Kureishi and Jamsheed Markear (a Pakistani Zoroastrian).
Both began commentating in Pakistan’s Test and first-class matches in Pakistan for Radio Pakistan in the early 1950s and both of them soon became mentors and friends of a number of leading Pakistani players of the era.
For more detail Calling on the game: History of cricket commentary in Pakistan
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