The immensity of the loss of Richie Benaud from our lounge rooms, our lore and our lives is best expressed by an anecdote Benaud related about himself. As he left the commentators' eyrie at the SCG at the end of day's play in 1982, Benaud obliged with an autograph for a 12-year-old boy, who thanked him, then asked: "Did you ever play cricket for Australia, Mr Benaud?"

Benaud was more amused than offended. He never did live in the past, an ever-increasing long time ago. He made his debut for New South Wales a few months after Don Bradman retired. He understood that anyone born after 1960 would have no living recollection of himself as an Australian cricketer, a leg-spinning all-rounder and shrewd and successful captain.

His artistry as a player was not preserved by the crude audio-visual gadgetry of his time, but his legend as a commentator was made and magnified by the ever more sophisticated gadgetry of ours. Most people only knew of him as a cricketer, but knew him intimately as a commentator. But his two careers, one spun out of the other, spanned 60 years and more than 500 Test matches, and established him in the mind of Gideon Haigh, writing in Wisden, as "perhaps the most influential cricketer and cricket personality since World War II". Haigh also described him as the face of cricket, to follow John Arlott's voice, and to which we would add, he was in this country the game's post-Bradman embodiment.

Benaud's cricket commentary spoke for itself. Inimitably, it is tempting to add, but the fact is that it was imitated all the time and everywhere. It was imitation in its sincerest form, nearer to idolatry than flattery. Benaud once said he kept three precepts in mind while commentating: that a statement should not be posed as a question; that there were no teams called "we" or "they"; and that the value of the pause should never be underestimated. Would that some latter-day commentators adhere even to one of these! It made Benaud, above all, the master of the now lost art of the understatement. Journalist and former parliamentarian Ian Cover still recalls a moment in the West Indies in 1991 when Mark Waugh flat-batted Curtly Ambrose over point for six, and the several seconds of wordless astonishment that ensued, and then Benaud: "He's given that something".

But Benaud never was a sycophant. Of this, there was a recent reminder. In the lead-up to the Australia-New Zealand World Cup final, the media default was to revisit the infamous underarm incident of 1981. That night, Benaud was unsparing. "I think it was a disgraceful performance from a captain who got his sums wrong today," he said. "I think ... it was one of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field."

Benaud the cricketer was as Benaud the commentator, a little apart from and above the rest. For an appreciation of his cricket, we must turn to that oldest form of technology, the written word. Benaud blossomed slowly, as leg-spinners did then, but always with a clear idea about how the game should be played. He took a poorly performing Australian side and made it successful again, and took a game that had fallen into stasis and made it vibrant again.

His two greatest exploits came in the space of nine months in 1960 and 1961. The first was to conspire with West Indian captain Frank Worrell to play enterprising cricket, come what may, in a series that began with the first tied Test in Brisbane and continued for five Tests in that epic key, thrilling big crowds and lifting the game out of doldrums. It is intriguing to remember that Benaud met Worrell at Sydney airport at the start of that summer, not as Australian captain, but in his capacity as a reporter for the Sydney Sun. The strands already were beginning to entwine.

His second mark was to go around the wicket at Old Trafford, then an unorthodox move, and take five wickets in a rush – including Peter May's, bowled around his legs – to lead Australia to victory from a losing position and so to safeguard the Ashes once more.

"The tour was a personal triumph for Richie Benaud, possibly the most popular captain of any overseas team to come to Great Britain," Wisden recorded. Benaud had announced upon arrival that Australia would remain intent on faster scoring, brisker field changes, more overs per hour and cricket to please spectators, no matter what their opponents did. They would also leave umpiring to the umpires. These principles and themes would run through his 50 years as a peerless commentator.

"If one player, more than any other, has deserved well of cricket for lifting the game out of the doldrums, that man is Richard Benaud," remarked Wisden in crowning him as one of its players of the year in 1962. "He has succeeded in his aim to re-create interest in cricket because he loves playing it." He also got an OBE that year.

By the time Benaud retired in 1963, he was already well embarked on his commentary career. He would work for the BBC for 36 years, and in 1977 front Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket revolution, then from the rapprochement two years later conduct Channel 9's iconic coverage of cricket in this country. His involvement with WSC upheaval was consistent with his lifelong principles: it was the future, to which he always looked.

The fable of Richie Benaud grew and grew. Several times he was reported to be on the verge of retirement, but despite a car crash two years ago and diagnosis of skin cancer last year, he never did formally bid us good night and farewell. As recently as last season, Channel Nine used him for voiceovers and in promos, and contemplated miking him up at home for its broadcast. There was a Kim Jong-un element to it all, as if Channel Nine felt that his presence had to be kept alive because Australia was not yet ready for a time and a landscape beyond Benaud. They were probably right.

To answer that boy in 1982, yes, Richie Benaud did play for Australia. But to channel Benaud himself (pause) there's a just little bit more to it than that.