Harold Dennis ‘Dickie’ Bird MBE OBE, a legend of Yorkshire Cricket and one of cricket’s most recognisable names and faces.
A native of Barnsley, Dickie – born April 19, 1933 – has passed away at the age of 92.
Yes, the news will bring sadness to all four corners of the globe, yet it will also spark an outpouring of wonderful memories of a man who made his name as the game’s most iconic umpire.
A 93-game first-class career as a player for Yorkshire and Leicestershire started in 1956 and finished in 1964, yielding 3,314 runs, including two centuries.
A career best of 181 not out came with the white rose proudly on his chest during a County Championship win over Glamorgan at Bradford in 1959.
Yorkshire won the title that season, but it preceded a move to Grace Road, where he played the majority of his first-team career.
This diminutive right-handed batter’s playing career started in a Barnsley team alongside to-be Knights Geoffrey Boycott and the journalist Michael Parkinson.
A son of a coal miner, there is a statue of Dickie in Barnsley, and he was an avid supporter of the town’s football team.
He retired aged 32, initially into coaching, and then umpiring, where he officiated all the top matches; Ashes series, World Cup finals.
He gave out many a household name but made friends galore – a measure of a wonderful man with a loveable, eccentric style.
Dickie officiated in 66 Test Matches and 69 One-Day Internationals between 1973 and 1996.
His first Test Match came in early July 1973, between England and New Zealand at Headingley.
It is amazing to think that it took him almost 20 years to officiate in a Test Match outside of England, that fixture between Zimbabwe and India in October 1992.
Dickie’s wings were spread farther, earlier, in ODIs, but he umpired a trio of World Cup finals on home soil at Lord’s in 1975, 1979 and 1983.
The Home of Cricket was, fittingly, the venue for his final international appearance in the middle – a Test Match between England and India at Lord’s in late June 1996.
The only Yorkshire link in either team that week came in the form of India legend Sachin Tendulkar, our county’s first ever overseas player four years earlier.
Bird’s eccentric style as an umpire made him a ‘must watch’ part of the game, and there were amusing moments galore.
Here was a man who officiated in the famous Championship match between Derbyshire and Lancashire at Buxton in early June 1975 when snow stopped play. He would later stop play for excessive sunlight between England and the West Indies at Old Trafford in 1995.
Sun in Manchester? How unlucky could Dickie have been?
He umpired his final first-class match at Headingley, between Yorkshire and Warwickshire in 1998.
Upon retirement, he was still a visible presence, be it on TV quiz and chat shows. His autobiography remains one of the biggest selling sports books of all time, selling more than one million copies.
One of his proudest moments came when he was appointed as Yorkshire’s president in 2014, a post he held for two years until replaced by John Hampshire.
That period coincided with back-to-back County Championship titles under the leadership of Andrew Gale, Jason Gillespie and fellow son of Barnsley, Martyn Moxon.
A cricketing legend, yes, but one of his most significant contributions was the charity work he did. In 2021, the Barnsley Chronicle wrote a piece celebrating the fact he had donated £1m to children’s charities throughout his life.
“It’s a lot of money, but it’s so worth it,” he said.
In 2015, he donated £125,000 to the county club to build a new player’s balcony at Headingley, which was subsequently named after him.
Dickie has been a constant presence at Yorkshire games in recent years, including at Scarborough, a place he loved.
He will never be forgotten, and his popularity will be evident in the days and weeks to follow.
