Umpire 'married to cricket' and impossible to ignore

Yorkshire to the bone, Dickie Bird became a household name for his charismatic personality on and off the cricket pitch

- RORY DOLLARD

Dickie Bird achieved only moderate success in his cricket-playing career, but from the moment he traded his bat for an umpire’s cap he was well on the way to becoming a towering figure in the sport’s history.

It is often said that a good umpire is the one who goes unnoticed, but one need never look beyond Bird for an exception to that rule. Bird, who has died at the age of 92, was at once an outstanding umpire and impossible to ignore.

Although the quintessential Yorkshire cricket man, his good nature, vivid character and magnetic attraction to unlikely or amusing circumstances saw his legend outgrow geographical and sporting borders.

He shared the field with some of the game’s biggest stars and brightest talents but, more often than not, a line of autograph hunters formed to meet the man in the middle at the end of a day’s play. He signed every time.

Bird’s popularity ultimately transcended umpiring, too. His autobiography chalked up more than a million sales, becoming the nation’s biggest-selling sports autobiography at the time, and he entertained the public for years as a TV personality and travelling raconteur. In a favoured anecdote, he claimed his one-man show drew a bigger audience in Leeds than Shirley Bassey.

When he ascended to the role of Yorkshire president in 2014, he took even greater joy in the team’s county championship Triumph in his first season and even forked out £125,000 to fund a new players' balcony at Headingley.