It testifies to the excitement generated by this Ashes series that it has overshadowed Richie Benaud's imminent disappearance from British television screens after 42 years of deep knowledge, dry wit and sartorial idiosyncrasies.
When he seemed set to fade away following Channel 4's capture of cricket broadcast rights in 1999, allies ranging from Piers Morgan to Mick Jagger came together to protest that summer without Richie was unthinkable. This time there has been little fuss, no public campaign, no call for a private member's bill to ensure Benaud's preservation in the commentary box à la Jeremy Bentham. Perhaps after the Oval Test, "morning everyone" will be replaced by mourning everyone but this summer cricket has taken precedence.
There is no doubt that Benaud prefers it this way. If the master commentator has a motif, it is economy of gesture; as he sums it up in his new book My Spin On Cricket: "Don't speak unless you can add to the picture." A couple of days after the Trent Bridge Test he is still pleased by the commentary spell with which he and Mike Atherton closed the match:
"We didn't say much. Didn't have to. Mike Atherton made one observation which was relevant to the situation. Otherwise, there was nothing to add."
When the photographer posing him suggests he imagine he is commentating on a dramatic Test match, Benaud says: "If it was me, I probably wouldn't be saying anything."
Benaud also points out that the past six years almost did not happen. When Channel 4 won the rights, one way they publicly pledged to "revolutionise" cricket coverage was by banning "grey-haired old fogeys". Benaud wrote in his News of the World column: "I see that Channel 4 are not going to have any grey-haired old fogies in the com box. I'm sure David Gower and Tony Lewis can look after themselves in this regard but who else could they possibly have in mind?" A few months later Benaud was having dinner in Canberra with his brother John when the phone rang: it was Channel 4, who had realised that even revolutions need some semblance of continuity.
It is Benaud, too, who has made the call about his commentary future, by deciding that he is a "free-to-air man", and thus, although he will continue to work for Kerry Packer's Channel Nine in Australia, he will not be drawn into the new world of Sky. The designation "free-to-air man" is one he cannot really explain. He believes that "the differences would be considerable" in working for pay-TV but cannot be specific and finally concludes: "Let's just say that at 74 I'm in the mindset that, having been free-to-air, I want to stay free-to-air."
"Mind-set" is a word Benaud uses a lot, and not insignificantly: there can be few minds so calmly set. I first met Benaud 15 years ago but this is the first time I have interviewed him. He has declined other invitations - with, it must be said, impeccable politeness and no lack of generosity.
Some years ago, for example, I approached him while writing a social history of Australian cricket in the 1950s and 1960s. He said he would prefer if I submitted him a list of questions. I sent him seven pages' worth and within the week 11 pages of single-spaced typewritten answers teeming with fascinating detail had arrived. Emboldened, I sent another four pages of supplementary questions; another six pages of answers arrived post haste.
Benaud can appear stand-offish but I think he is merely careful. He leans forward throughout our conversation, perhaps imagining a microphone in his hand: commentary is so much a part of his life it may now be his natural vein.
Certainly Benaud's reliability and integrity as a commentator matter to him deeply. He explains that he relies on a group of close associates led by his wife Daphne - whom he met when she was E W Swanton's private secretary 44 years ago - to monitor his performance: "I have a very small but very good cross-section of people whom I trust implicitly. Daphne's one of them. With her background in BBC and in cricket writing and her knowledge of cricket and the English language, she is a wonderful guide to how things are going. There are others. Mr Packer would be very quick to tell me if things weren't going well, because he knows he can ring up and say: 'Son, not too sure what was going on out there. Perhaps you can advise me what the mind-set was'."
The beginnings of Benaud's career, of course, date back to an era when the proprietor was always deserving of his honorific. He experienced his first media urges in the early 1950s when he was a junior accountant in the "counting house" of the Fairfax media group in Sydney. He would drift upstairs to the offices of Sporting Life magazine where Keith Miller held court with three first-class cricketers turned journalists, Dick Whitington, Ginty Lush and Johnnie Moyes. Benaud would think: "This is the most exciting thing. I'd love to be able to write like all these guys."
Benaud applied annually for a reporter's job at Fairfax's morning paper, the Sun. For six consecutive years the editor Lindsay Clinch turned him down, not weakening until Benaud arrived home from a successful 1956 Ashes tour.
Benaud recalls their interview with such evident enjoyment that he even permits himself a profanity.
"I s'pose you've come in to ask about your application to join editorial," said Clinch.
"Yes, Mr Clinch."
"When did you get back?"
"Last night."
"That's pretty keen."
"I'm pretty keen to do it, Mr Clinch."
"Why is that?"
"I want to learn to be a journalist."
"You want to fucking learn to be a journalist. Everyone would like to learn to be a journalist, particularly some of those who are writing on this paper !"
For the first few years of his career Benaud was apprenticed to the paper's star police roundsman Noel Bailey, chasing fires, car crashes and even the odd murder. Listening to Bailey dictate copy of perfect length from payphones with minutes to edition taught him the importance of not wasting a word: something that still characterises his plain, spare prose as well as his concise commentary.
Working as a columnist while Australian captain made him the object of some suspicion from a hidebound and parsimonious Australian board of control. In an age when Test cricketers seem to be issued a column with their cap it seems astonishing that Benaud was in his time barred by board statute from writing about any match in which he was involved, even when he dashed off 15 excited paragraphs for Sydney's Sun after the tied Test in 1960-61.
"I got a letter from Barnesy [the board secretary Alan Barnes] in the next post," Benaud recalls. It said: 'I wish to remind you that you have broken by-law so-and-so by writing about what occurred in a day's play. Please do not do this again or the board will have to take action'."
When freed by retirement from the board's diktat, Benaud made tough calls as a journalist. He was at the forefront of criticism of Charlie Griffith's bowling action 40 years ago; he backed his brother John in a celebrated dispute with the New South Wales Cricket Association over footwear in 1970; he boldly fronted Kerry Packer's breakaway World Series Cricket in 1977. As years have passed, however, his pronouncements on the game have been less trenchant, more Delphic.
Benaud's great hero Miller, thought "too wild", never led Australia in a Test; Benaud's great friend, the gruff, insouciant Neil Harvey, did it only once in an emergency. How does Benaud feel, I wonder, about the likelihood that the best Australian cricketer of his generation, Shane Warne, will probably not captain his country for reasons that have nothing to do with his cricket ability or his leadership skills. Is cricket too precious about this stuff?
"There's no yes-or-no answer to that," says Benaud. "In 1999 the situation arose where either Steve Waugh or Shane Warne was going to be captain. I thought Warnie captained the Australian team very well in the one-day games but Steve Waugh was vice-captain of the Test team, and I saw no reason why he should not become captain. Ian Chappell thought Warne should have been captain, which is something he and I have discussed many times over a glass or two of red."
But Warne was then Waugh's vice-captain, which must have entitled him to succession in the same way. Do you think his claims have been wrongly discounted? "I wouldn't be prepared to say that. It would have been very nice to see Shane captain, and where he's had a chance to captain the side he's done very well."
Warne looks, does Benaud not feel, like the kind of man around which cricket teams rally? "You may well be right."
And there is surely something a little quaint about losing the Australian vice-captaincy for his peccadilloes while representing Hampshire? "The only way you would find out about that would be to ask the board why they stripped him of the vice-captaincy. Whether you got an answer would probably depend on the libel laws."
Do you think they were right or wrong? "I wouldn't be prepared to answer that. You want me to answer that so you can get a headline or a lead-in to a chapter."
I'm asking because I'm interested in your views. "I've no views other than those I've given you."
Such reticence about a subject that may or may not constitute a headline sits a little oddly with Benaud's 45 years at News of the World, where he bears an increasing resemblance to the pianist in a bordello.
Does Benaud read the Screws? "Mmmm. Yes." What does he think of it? "It's an interesting paper, particularly to someone who's been employed longer than any other freelance contributor." Care to add anything? "I think I'll leave it at that."
Benaud, likewise, is not to be drawn on the subject of the relationship between television, inherently sensationalist, and cricket, inherently not. All he will say on the subject of behaviour is that players should mind their ps and qs. "There are 15 or 16 cameras around now, and 24 or 25 tape machines," he says. "The players have to realise that everything will be captured."
Does he not agree that broadcasters have something of a vested interest in playing up petulance and confrontation - things cricket would like to curb - because it makes good television? "No. You might as well say it would be good if someone went up and punched the umpire every so often."
Seeking Benaud for critical comment, of course, is to miss his point. The game is not short of controversialists. There is only one Benaud. And shortly, in England, there will be none: another reason, if it was needed, not to miss this Oval Test.
My Spin On Cricket by Richie Benaud is published by Hodder & Stoughton at £18.99 on September 12. To order a copy for £17.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call the Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875
