Kerry Packer is being eulogized as one the greats of cricket, despite turning the establishment upside down in the 1970s and never playing at first-class level.
Tributes flowed from cricket's administrators, commentators and elite players on Tuesday for Packer, whose World Series Cricket concept revolutionized the sport and gave it mass-market appeal.
Packer, Australia's richest man, died late Monday at his Sydney home. He was 68.
Shane Warne, the most successful bowler in test cricket and a close friend of the media tycoon for 13 years, said: "Everyone involved in world cricket owes [Packer] so much."
Warne and his Australian teammates wore black armbands on day two of the second cricket test against South Africa in Melbourne.
Players from both teams stood for a minute of silence before play.
Packer introduced night play, a white ball and colored uniforms and gave limited-overs cricket wide exposure to a TV audience that was tiring of test match coverage -- which could last days without producing a winner.
Originally shunned by cricket administrators and derided for what some dubbed "pajama cricket" when he launched his World Series in 1977, Packer became one of the game's biggest powerbrokers.
International Cricket Council president Ehsan Mani said Packer had an undeniably enduring influence on the sport.
"Very few people in the history of the game, either players or administrators, can be said to have changed the game but Kerry Packer can rightly be considered someone who did just that," Mani said in a statement.
WSC "took the game by the scruff of the neck and dragged it into the modern era and although, at the time, many people had reservations, the current healthy state of our sport shows how wise he was."
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