By the time the Sun was closed in 1988 following the disastrous takeover by Warwick Fairfax, Benaud had risen to be the editor-in-chief of the paper.
Throughout the 1990s Benaud wrote cricket columns for Australian, British and Indian sports magazines and ghost-wrote several autobiographies.
While Captain of the NSW team, Benaud was famously suspended for a month after refusing to obey the ban on Adidas Grass-sports shoes.
[1] The public and media outcry forced Cricket NSW to overturn their decision, and in the off-season the ban was lifted.
Mark Lawson said it provided "intriguing insights into the mixture of statistical chicanery, personal friendships, regional politics, hunches and finger-crossing that decides the identities of Test elevens in most parts of the world".