Cricketing legend who defined the umpire’s art

> Pictured in 1996, former Test umpire Harold ‘Dickie’ Bird, who has died at the age of 92

- Rebecca Naden/PA

DICKIE Bird achieved only moderate success in his first cricketing 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 one that 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 book ever, 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.

A renewed involvement with his old side proved a major autumn boon following a period of ill-health and loneliness which followed a stroke in 2009 and he described his appointment as the “pinnacle of my life”.