Cricket great Richie Benaud dead at 84

Legendary cricket commentator Richie Benaud has died in a Sydney hospice.
"At the moment it is pretty dire," fellow Channel Nine commentator Michael Slater said on radio station 2KY on Friday morning.
"Things are not looking terrific, everyone is rallying around him."

The 84-year-old was receiving radiation treatment for skin cancer since November.

 

Slater said the next 24 hours were crucial for the former Australian captain as his wife, Daphne, family members and the cricket fraternity kept a vigil at his bedside.
In 2013, Benaud was involved in a car crash outside his Coogee hoe that left him with two fractured vertebrae and ended his time in the commentary box.

Richie Benaud pictured in the nets in 1952.

While his commentating for Channel Nine has become the stuff of summer legend, Benaud led the Australian team to world cricket dominance in the late 1950s.
He played 64 Test matches as an all-rounder between 1952 and 1964.
He took up his spot behind the microphone with the BBC while still captaining Australia in 1960, before becoming one of the greatest commentators in world cricket over the next half a century.
He is widely regarded as one of the most influential people in the game's history.
As news of Benaud's deteriorating health has begun to spread, tributes have been pouring in from across the world.