If you listened or watched any Australian, or even Global, cricket during the 1990s, you would have probably listened to the great Richie Benaud. While a decent test cricketer in his own right during his career (The first player to over 200 wickets and 2000 test runs), great praise, post life, was levied on the late commentator’s work as a “critic, author,... organizer of the game” (de Andrado).
If you weren’t lucky enough to listen to Benaud commentate during the Nine Network’s golden years that aligned with the golden era of Australian cricket, it’s not like anything that you’ve ever listened to, especially compared to modern commentary. I encourage you to give it a listen, but more importantly, listen between Benaud’s words. A strategic usage of silence to allow a moment to speak for itself. And when he did talk, it wasn’t like anything you’d ever heard before. It was rich, it was colourful, you felt like this was a brand new conversation with a new perspective, from the people watching the cricket for the first time or watching their 7th Ashes series. It was nice listening, one that deeply respected the intelligence of the audience while still managing to add something new.
But something about Benaud’s rules suggest that, especially now, we need them more than ever. In a social media filled world where voices and noise are competing for your attention, perhaps we do need to “remember the value of the pause”. In a world with similar talking points, do we need to move beyond the cliches and try to bring in fresh perspectives? Perhaps, each of these deserve to be delved into.
Never ask for a statement.
Mayhaps, this one didn’t age too well. This article off to a good start.
But can we still find relevance from this statement? As a matter of fact, you can.
Benaud, as a commentator, had a very commentary-specific rule to why he refused to use a statement as a question. For example, he would avoid “he’s out, isn’t he?”. He knew deep down that the viewer and spectator, or the people he interviewed, were incredibly intelligent people in their own rights. He would never appreciate being stooped down to, so he never stooped the “level” of his speech.
At surface level, it doesn’t have the most application to everyday life. In fact, there is power in using questions to drive a debate or intellectual conversation forward. Questions can open new perspectives, and reveal things that normal statement-based conversation cannot.
Where you can use this, however, is in casual conversation. No matter what the scenario is, a question should not be thrown around lightly. People are intelligent, sometimes more intelligent than they let on to other people. There isn’t a need to ask what can be just said. You don’t need it. Be picky and choosy with your words. Be smart with interrogative structure, Benaud’s rule tells us.
Remember the Value of a Pause.
There is a lot to discuss with this.
One of my biggest pet peeves with modern sports journalism is that a lot of it feels like white noise. When I watch NHL media today, I like to listen to what the people have to say. It feels too “noisy”. When someone scores a huge goal, the commentators and the TV direction like to fill me up with replays and noise “discussing” the goal I just watched with my own eyes. I saw it, why do I need someone to describe it to me again? And the interviews are often worse. Interview questions range from ragebait style questions (one to Connor McDavid particularly ticked me off: do you think you have what it takes in the future to win - this one was asked after McDavid returned from losing the Gold Medal game to the US), to absolute nothing-burger of questions. “Do you think you had a good game today, what do you think went wrong”, etc. Obviously, no star player or captain is going to throw their teammates under the bus by saying “yes, the team was shit today, we’re just playing for pride”, so the answers to these nothing-burger of questions comes off the same, each and every time.
And the problem with that? It’s a symptom of modern speech patterns. Admittedly, I struggle a lot with this too. My friends know that I am an incredibly talkative person. When my friend opens his/her DMs after waking up, the red “ping” count is usually high. It’s my fault for this: I find a deep dissatisfaction with leaving a friend on “read’ without a reply.
But to my credit (and deep sense of not wanting to be the odd one out), plenty of people do this. And on social media, the constant loop of “receive-reply-receive-reply” is a hard one to break out of. Of course I want my friends to see that I value them.
We can stem a question from that line of thinking? Can you value someone that lets actions do the talking over words?
I will likely forget what I’ve written here over the next few days and deeply regret that I threw the word “shit” about three paragraphs earlier. Did I need to include the curse? No, I mostly used it to buff the word count of this.
The point is that sometimes, you don’t need words. You need to be concise. Sometimes, even let the moment speak for itself. The phrase “A picture is a thousand words” still holds true in today’s society. Photography subreddits remain amongst the most popular on the platform.
Talk is cheap, and your moments and actions mean more. Supplanting your cheap talk with silence that allows your colleagues to process information in their own way gives them the impression that you value their thoughts and thinking. And it’s nice when people think this way.
And sometimes, the world doesn’t need yet another “point-of-view” of a situation. Someone has already done it, or someone has already done it better than you. Let the world play out before you jump to a conclusion.
There are no teams in the world called “we” or “they”.
“We” and “They”, in Benaud’s world, and most of our words, were pronouns. But to Benaud, they were a breakdown of any credibility that the audience had in him. According to the commentator, using “we” or “they” was a breakdown in partiality or credibility. Personally, he strived for impartiality under all cost, and tried to avoid showing his personal bias during his time in the commentary booth.
In an ever-more so argumentative world, using these words too much has two noted effects, much in line with Benaud’s personal grievances with the two particular pronouns.
Tribalism is a very real thing in today’s society, but it has been a prevailing umbrella for many generations of human history. With rose colored glasses, we look at the works of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and their expressed desire for a lack of political parties. The only problem is that people have differing desires and differing ways to get to humanities’ collective desires. So naturally, we have political parties, and by extension, tribalism.
This is not an argument against political parties. You cannot, in any sane world, place the socialists and the libertarians together. They mix as well as ammonia and bleach, which would cause quite the unpleasant showing.
The big problem now is that we, as a society, are too fast to brand a side as a “big group”, when in reality, there are always different sides to a side. Within the umbrella term “liberal”, there is “moderate”, “centrist”, “liberal but fiscally conservative”, “socialist”, and “anarchist”. And THAT is where Benaud’s logic still shines beyond the grave. Place the collective “liberal” grouping under a pronoun. “Them”. Now place your group of drinking buddies or school friends, and give them the pronoun “we”. There is a connotation to these words. Your words, and how you refer to people have weight.
Studies have been conducted, and these results show that many people are actually more alike than what we are personally inclined to believe. In psychology, this sheltering is known as groupthink, and this phenomenon, throughout history (but now inflated by online bubbles) has prevented collaborative talk between sides.
Many of the great documents of our government were formed through collaboration and compromise. The Constitution, and through the words of the constitution, the houses of Congress, were formed only through compromise.
This doesn’t happen if you lazily group yourselves into “us”, “we”, or “they”. To do this is rude and uncouth, and you show your unprofessionalism and bias when speaking like this. Benaud was highly regarded by opposition commentators for this reason: he was tough, but never rude. Bias, but always respectful with his views.
The other issue: it is simply not respectful.
A common theme you’ve likely noticed throughout this piece is that Benaud always viewed the people who listened to him as equals. Personally, if he referred to the teams as “we” or “they”, not only would be showing a bias that you could go watch Star Sports for, but he would also be replacing what could have been intelligent analysis for the viewer.
I’ve come up with an example that may or may not capture the spirit.
“They’ve hit the ball to the boundary, a fine chase completed.”
Or
“Australia have completed a fine chase, truly a wonderful show for all who have braved the rain today.”
Benaud had a point. The pronouns provide a bit less freedom to expand. Using pronouns feels less of a creative form and more of boring commentary. But by being specific and treating the audience like a sponge who knew a lot and was ready for storytelling, he could treat every cricket match like a canvas that was just ready to be told to the world.
Avoid cliches and banalites.
While Benaud found this distinction important enough to warrant its own part of his personal philosophy, if you look into the reasoning in his first three points, most of them, especially his avoidance of “we” and “they”, fall cleanly into this rule.
His stressing point to himself to avoid common catchphrases kept his commentary unique each and every time you listened to him. Even in a sport with such common phrases as “he’s got him plump”, or “he’s hit that nicely to the boundary”, Benaud attempted, in the games he was tasked with, to not use the common catchphrases that would easily pile up during the rigors of a 5-day test match.
This point blends in slightly with his previous point on “we” or “they”. Just like we can paint a group with one color, we can also use catchphrases to (inadvertently or with purpose) mislead and overstereotype a group. In addition, it’s just lazy.
If you’re attempting to hit a word-count on an essay, are you going to make your entire argument for your teacher all cliches and stereotypes? No, because stereotypes have been beaten into the Earth so much that we can describe many of them with a single line of text.
When you try to be original in your criticism or in your praise, you force yourself to look beyond what’s already been said, malicious or laudatory, and you bring a unique perspective that might bring change. Or, at bare minimum, just provide something new to listen to that isn’t the same talking points day in and day out. A lot of dislike leveled toward legacy cable media right now is that most of it talks about the same things. In politics, one channel dumps on the president while the other makes sure that he is praised to heaven. In sports, especially with the popularity of ESPN’s First Take, have taken the idea of “hot take” commentary and have absolutely run the ball through the end zone, out of the stadium, and into the Hudson River. By that, I mean that things that aren’t even hot takes (like statements rephrased as ragebait inducing questions) are being used on these shows as talking points to keep the dopamine of First Take going. This format has even seeped into the major flagship shows.
Most of these hot-take shows use the rewashed and redried stereotypes and general format because they know that someone will eventually watch it. But this has come at the cost of original commentary taking a backseat. What a shame it is. When you try to be original with your words, we get new perspectives and new ideas.
The Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought a disaster, and neither bear any relationship with a dropped catch.
Look, hyperbolizing and making metaphors is a fun exercise for the brain. I do it all the time, especially as someone who frequently watches sports. I was at UBS Arena to watch the Islanders take on the Columbus Blue Jackets the other day. And oh boy, were some of the things me and some of my fellow section mates said… interesting!
“Blind as a bat, he should be sent to [Perkins] School for the Blind.”
“Worst disaster in NYC since 9/11, that Goalie Interference.”
Etcetera.
You get the idea. Sometimes, we do it for humor and love for the game.
But that’s sports. Real life, however, is a different story.
Benaud, if he used some of these metaphors, wouldn’t likely be excused for his choice of words. Though, I think that Channel9 or regulators would have taken exception to him comparing a missed wicket to the Ethiopian disaster. He was a master at perspective. To him, cricket was a game, outside of the general world outside of the cricket field. And while politics does intersect with sport at times, his job was to make sure that those listening to him got the cricket, and just the cricket, as his job title insisted of him.
We’ve lost a lot of that internal perspective in our daily lives. Social media, again, has done great damage in this regard. Reddit, for all of its faults, is a good “flood” indicator of where society is at a point in time. Reddit became known for its doomers and people posting sensationalist posts along the lines of [rather mundane civil action that only affects two people] is the first step in [the next massive war crime]. While it’s fair to point out that the patterns of the past might become the happenings of today, we should also keep in mind the perspective in which things are said.
I apologize for bringing more internet parlance into this, but I find it deeply relevant to the point at hand.
The Bean Soup Theory is a tendency for people to make topics about themselves, even though the original focus of content was not originally about anything near relevant to what they are attempting to steer the topic toward. While it can range from something as simple as modifications to a bean soup recipe, this is incredibly common with politics. Something as simple as a sports result can be attributed to politics if you try hard enough. Don’t try to skew it, you’ve done it once too. Other topics will always use other topics as a weapon/mouthpiece for their agenda. But sometimes, the metaphors don’t need to happen. They should stay apart and separate, as they don’t really “match the occasion”.
Is making metaphors fun? Yes. Is it necessary? No. Does it sometimes trivialize something serious or completely suck joy out of something unrelated? Absolutely. So a good sense of self-awareness and perspective should be kept, per Benaud’s rules.
Put your brain into gear before opening your mouth.
It feels like a very roundabout way to say “think about what you’re going to say before you say it”. But this common piece of parental advice after you said something out of pocket is something that is deeply lacking in modern society.
I’ve done a bit of criticism of social media in this piece; unfortunately, each of my criticisms of social media has had relevance to each of Benaud’s points. And I love social media myself. I have friends from all over the US, North America, and even some overseas. Social Media is the only way I can reach them and share my writings. But also… social media has made me really careless sometimes with what I say.
In a rule of TV regulators (the one Benaud found himself commentating in), every word and statement is deeply checked to make sure it is “kosher” and “not offensive”. It removes some of the fun in my opinion, but when you can’t cater to specific audiences like on YouTube, you have to ensure that the public who will hear your words will be focusing on your job rather than your opinions you say online.
A particularly notorious one was American baseball commentator Thom Brenndaman, who threw the f-slur (the anti-queer one) when he thought his microphone was cold. Predictably, he was fired by Fox Sports within the week. In addition, in Benaud’s Australia, extra care must be taken not to offend the crown (Australia is still part of the English Crown and has a Governor-General).
In general, I feel that people should watch what you say. While we should attempt to believe that people have the best intentions, we need to keep in mind what we say. But connecting back to my point on social media makes me careless, it’s hard to realize that there are real people behind a screen. For example… when I’m talking to user “Sanguis_Astrae” on Discord, I am more “performative” (No, I am NOT calling someone a slur on Discord), and my speech is generally less refined, and the memes I send would send me to a confessional booth if I share them anywhere else. BUT I also know Astrae’s name on Instagram, and when I talk to her there, I am significantly more careful that the memes I send won’t send me to federal prison.
See, the purpose of this entire thing is that I think when I know that there is a living, breathing human on the receiving end of my DM. But when I see a pseudonym, I’m not as careful.
Known as the online disinhibition effect, it causes us not to think about the consequences of our actions when we talk online. This effect also spreads in person. The collectivity, while not as serious as online, can be seen with the absolute rotten state of modern spoken language. We don’t speak in sentences, and ever have, but our speech and conduct toward others has generally become more garish and offputting. The word “cunt” was once seen as an absolute abomination of a word, referring to a woman’s privates and a word only to be used in the most extreme cases, bar, not at all. Now, it is still rather taboo, but it has increasingly been thrown around like hotcakes. We don’t think so, we take our social-media disinhibition and use these same habits online in person, to our friends, to our partners, hell, even to our own families.
It is disgusting, and honestly, I think that the most we can do about this is focus on our speech and conduct at the individual level.
Concentrate Fiercely at all times.
I don’t think it takes much connection to see that all of Benaud’s personal principles require incredible mental fortitude and concentration. For all of his most famous calls to be so unique and so erudite, but all different at the same time.
Our attention span has been slowly reducing over time. Thanks to the advent of short-media content, everything has been built to hone in on our ever decreasing focus and concentration, and more on grabbing retention over a long period of time with what can be described as “as mass assault on our senses”. Videos is the most commonly targeted one, but TV (adverts are shorter and more revolting to the eyes and focused on “memeable” moments) and songs (the average length of a pop song has gradually decreased over the last 30 years) are feeling the burn as well.
While there is a lot of cool short-term content out there, is there still value in long, patient, and drawn out things?
Test cricket, where Benaud would spend 5 days, 8 hours daily, commentating and doing his damn best at applying his personal principles to his job. Test cricket, as a whole, during his peak in the 1990s, was seen as a dying art. The One-Day Format was rising in popularity and the Cricket World Cup was a peak of that. The 20-over format (t20) that was about to come into fruition was about to strip down cricket even further into a 3 hour funfest. Test cricket was expensive and usually came with the lowest profit margins, so much so that legendary test teams such as the West Indies fell into disrepair.
But to those who still took the time to listen or watch Test cricket, the purest form of cricket. The battle against time was considered something to wait until day 4 or day 5 to worry about, a mere itch that needed to be medicated with some AsperCreme on occasion. With the worry of limited overs behind you, one can focus on cricket at its purest- a battle between bowler and batter, leather, wood, and 11 fielders who are salivating for you to misplay a sphere of leather. And when the sphere takes the batter out, the feeling is pure ecstasy.
We gain this feeling and purity through waiting, and because Benaud concentrated, those who were patient enough to join him got a wonderful treat for eyes and ears.
So, possibly, for our lives, we should take value in waiting. Sit at a cafe or a curb and watch the school bus stop and the tourists rush by. Sit at a lake and watch momma duck and her ducklings learn to swim. Take the time to set an entire album on and listen deeply to the meanings of every note and every deliberate beat and lyric. It’s a treat- trust me!
Above all, don’t take yourself too seriously, and have fun.
To the man “who’s native tongue was cricket” in his obituary, Benaud’s final personal principle was perhaps the most meaningful to him. To him, concentration couldn’t occur if he didn’t enjoy what he did. He couldn’t wow his loyal followers without enjoying what he did! He was a test cricketer back when he played, and he enjoyed it so much he decided to pick up the microphone and tell everyone all about it?
For too long, we’ve focused on as a society “do what you love” rather than “love what you do”. We take ourselves too seriously in career selection, shepherding kids into career plans and college majors often as early as junior year of high school. Everyone is pent up and aggressive, and naturally, will fall back on laziness and rudeness when confronted with reality or an opposition viewpoint.
In fact, Benaud would have been proud of you for expressing your views with words! Better than nothing. He’d tell you then, in my opinion, to relax, and tell you everything that bothered you, or commentate what you saw that day.
Naturally, doing this is easier if you enjoy yourself, but even if you’re not enjoying yourself, Benaud tells us not to take ourselves so seriously, and to think before you act out on what you’re about to do in frustration. You might perhaps see why you’re in the predicament you are!
Benaud hasn’t been with us for 10 years, and wrote the above 8 rules of commentary in 2012, believe it or not, confided in an eMail of all places. Benaud regarded them as rules of commentary, and when he died in 2015, the world lost a great orator of sport.
When I was researching this article, I was originally intending to make this an article of the downfall of sports media as a whole. However, I just found it easier to make his points a greater report and status indicator on written and spoken language as a whole. Because, let's face it, we could use some of Benaud’s principles in society today to make the voices of everyone heard in a society where it is so easy for those who know how to make their voice louder over others who might not be able to.
I conclude with this. I didn’t originally intend to write this as a preachy article. While it might have become that, let us use this more as a reminder of how one man orated his way through life for our enjoyment. Maybe though, just maybe, we could perhaps take a little of his advice with us through our day-to-day operations.
