RIP Richie Benaud

The seemingly unthinkable has happened today.

The man who seemed immortal and whose voice became as synonomous with summer as the cicadas, Paddle Pops and sunglasses tans, has died.

Richie Benaud, the voice of cricket in Australia, died at the age of 84 in a Sydney hospice today - he had been recently battling illness.

Richie had pulled out of his commentary duties with the Channel 9 team last summer after revealing he was fighting skin cancer. He had already withdrawn from his commentary duties during the English cricket summer, at the end of the epic Ashes series of 2005 - his famous last line was interrupted by Glenn McGrath taking Kevin Pietersen's wicket with the Ashes already safe in England's hands for the first time since 1987.

While most of us will remember Richie's voice and quotes from his time commentating with contemporaries Bill Lawry, the late Tony Greig and Mark Nicholas, etc., one must not forget that Richie was a former Australian captain and one of the great all-rounders of the game along with former teammate, Keith Miller, featuring in the Baggy Green from 1952 to 1964.

Before Warney and Muralitharan, Benaud was the spin king and took 248 wickets from 63 tests with an average of 27.03. Down the order, he was handy with the bat and it was only because of that that his batting average was only a paltry 24.45 - his highest test score being 122 against South Africa in Cape Town prior to the apartheid ban in the summer of 1957/58.

Plenty of profiles have been done on the man so I shan't go into much depth and detail about them here as I wouldn't do justice to this great cricketer.

What I will say is that cricket has lost its last real gentleman and one of the last links to a different time of cricket, when the game was truly a game free of the politics and financial benefits that come with the game turning professional.

Yet while Richie Benaud seemed a traditionalist from a different time, he was an advocate for the development of the game, playing a huge role in the commentary box with Tony Greig as the World Series Cricket got underway, and making the cream suit his trademark along with his quotes which would be parodied by the likes of Billy Birmingham and cricket fans over the years - take it as a compliment to the mark of the man.

It was a sad day when Richie Benaud finally ended his active involvement in the game.

Today will be a sadder day that the life of a legend and dear friend came to a quiet end.

The commentary box will seem a quieter place now.

RIP Richie.