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So Richie Benaud is hanging up his lip-mike, and come this time next year the voice of the southern summer will no longer grace the cricketing airwaves. Channel Nine's commentary box will certainly be a lesser place without him - even though it will still be able to boast the panache and metropolitan polish of Mark Nicholas, the laconic humour of Ian Healey, the crankiness of Ian Chappell, the bombast of Tony Greig, the chirpiness of Adam Gilchrist, the wryness of Bill Lawry, the Boy's Own enthusiasm of Michael Slater, the clubiness and chubbiness of Mark Taylor and the wacky Warnieness of the great blond one.

Part of the fun of listening to the cricket commentary here, either on radio or on television (and I confess to being an ABC Grandstand man myself), is eavesdropping on the ribald banter and pavilion humour that flows back and forth between the commentators. But nobody ever pokes fun at the dean of the box other than the great man himself - with the self-parody of a well-timed 'absolutely marvellous' or another well-known Benaudism. Is there any other figure in Australia who commands such reverence and universal respect? Certainly, I can't think of one.

I'll leave others to deconstruct what made him such a peerless commentator, but his economy of language, knowledge of the game, generosity of spirit and near perfect timing go some way to explaining his success.

I wonder if there are other things to divine from his "Aussie legend" status.

In many ways, Richie Benaud has been the anti-stereotype. As a captain of Australia, he was as determined to triumph as any other - he never lost a test series as captain - but was just about as far away from the win-at-all-costs, foul-mouthed sledger of modern-day mythology as it is possible to get. An ocker Aussie? Not Richie. He's got a holiday pad in France, is a man of sartorial refinement and prefers Shiraz to Tooheys.

Though he embodies many of the traditions of Australian cricket, it is hard to describe him as a traditionalist. Famously, he was the on-screen front man of the Packer World Series Revolution, and his enthusiastic support for pyjama cricket in the late-1970s did much to establish its legitimacy. Neither is he the sort of bloke to put his "Baggy Green" in a display case, knowing that the veneration of the Australian cap was an invention of the Steve Waugh era rather than something which had been handed down through the cricketing generations.

To my mind, Richie also speaks of the unique relationship between Britain and Australia, for up until 2005 he was also the voice of the northern summer. As a colleague reminded me in the midst of the wildfires, much is written about the much-vaunted special relationship between the UK and the US. But on an emotional, familial, historical and cultural level, the bonds between Britain and Australia are much stronger. More than any other living person, Richie Benaud reminds us of our shared traditions, loves, values and rivalries. How fitting, then, that he married a Pom, his beloved wife Daphne (a former Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú employee to boot).

Gideon Haigh, who is to cricket writing what Richie Benaud is to cricket commentary, has described the 78-year-old as "perhaps the most influential cricketer and cricket personality since the Second World War". Modest and understated, perhaps the only person who would argue with that assessment is the great man himself.

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