Benaud the new face of Australia

The voice of Australian cricket is about to become the face of Australian culture. Richie Benaud is fronting a series of funny, glossy TV advertisements, which will be screened all round the world in an attempt to reinvent Australia's image as a tourist destination.

The ads depict Benaud, wearing his favourite beige suit, strolling through Queensland rainforests and across Sydney's Bondi Beach.

He is pictured at the Camel Cup in Alice Springs, perched atop breathtaking escarpment, sticking his head out of a helicopter, riding a hot-air balloon and living it up outside the Bat & Ball Hotel. At every new location he delivers his trademark pronouncement: "Mmmmaaaarvellous."

The ads are a new variant on the pioneering "throw another shrimp on the barbie" commercials fronted by the actor Paul Hogan in the 1980s. Entitled "Australia: A Different Light", they are part of an ambitious $360m campaign to show that Australia is about more than just beer and barbecues, sun and surf.

Benaud, who appeared free of charge, confirmed this morning that the ads were not shot on location.

"I've been to all of those places or similar places in all the years I've been in Australia," he told Channel Nine, "but I wasn't actually there. It was a brilliant piece of technology and I'm very happy to be part of it."

Benaud looks in magnificent shape at 73 and had no hesitation in starring in the ads. Nor was he worried about the fact that they, ever so affectionately, take the mickey out of him.

"It was just one of those fun things," he said. "You need a very, very good director to do anything like that and you must always obey your director, and that's exactly what I did."

There can now be no doubt that Benaud is on something of a late-life roll. He played 63 Tests for Australia as a daring and innovative captain, legspinner and middle-order batsman. He has been the friendly, vaguely reptilian, face of Channel Nine's cricket coverage for 27 years. Never, though, has he been more famous.

He delivered the eulogy at Don Bradman's funeral in March 2001 and has since stepped effortlessly into The Don's shoes as cricket's wise old king. In 2003, Wisden revealed that he had seen 486 Test matches - more than any man alive. By my calculations, this week's first Test between England and New Zealand at Lord's will be his 500th.

It was widely feared Benaud would hang up the microphone when his Channel Nine contract expired at the end of last summer, prompting jittery speculation about who might succeed him. Simon O'Donnell, Ian Healy, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh, James Brayshaw, Mark Nicholas and even Brendon Julian were mentioned. Instead Benaud declared that he was happy, the fans were delirious, the station was cock-a-hoop and he planned to bat on indefinitely.

His distinctive voice - dry, wry and nasally - is mimicked by schoolkids, taxi-drivers, housewives and CEOs alike. His commentary shines on as fresh and droll and economical and astute and understated as ever. His fame now extends beyond cricket: last year he was an outside, though not entirely far-fetched, tip to become Australia's next Governor-General. And it reaches beyond Australia too: the readers of Wisden Cricket Monthly voted him best commentator in England, by ever-expanding margins, six years in a row.

The pop singer Delta Goodrem and poet Les Murray appear in similar ads. But Benaud's ranks as the funniest and the campaign's centrepiece. "Richie's been an icon for years, not just of Australian cricket but of Australian culture," said Australia's Tourism Minister Joe Hockey. "When I rang Richie it was an immediate: `Yes, I'm prepared to do it.'"

The ads have already been roadtested in the UK, Italy and Singapore - and "for some of the ads people had tears in their eyes", according to Hockey. But can this same smooth-talking, silver-haired 73-year-old conquer the land of baseball and woo potential US visitors to Australia? That might be Benaud 's biggest challenge in decades.

"When Hoges was taken to America 20 years ago nobody knew Hoges," Hockey points out. Benaud is equally, and typically, confident.

"Don't worry about America," he purred. "The Americans will be down in Australia. I'm patron of a cricket club in America, would you believe, the Sarasota Cricket Club in Florida, have been for many years, and you'll get a few people wandering down to Australia with that."

He's rarely been wrong before. Only a fool would doubt him now.