\u201cHe leaves behind a legacy of sportsmanship, humility, and joy — and a legion of admirers across generations,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
Bird had a modest playing career as a batter for Yorkshire and Leicestershire but made his name as an international umpire, wearing his trademark white cap.<\/p>\n
He was given a guard of honour at Lord\u2019s by England and India players before his final Test.<\/p>\n
Bird, who sold more than a million copies of his autobiography, was named Yorkshire president in 2014.<\/p>\n
Geoffrey Boycott, the Yorkshire and England batting great, had an enduring friendship with Bird from their days playing for Barnsley Cricket Club in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
The 84-year-old summed up Bird\u2019s quirky nature when he recalled how his friend used to insist on calling him Gerald, despite his protestations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say, \u2018My name\u2019s not Gerald, it\u2019s Geoffrey\u2019,\u201d Boycott wrote in the Telegraph. \u201cIt made no difference telling him because he would then say, \u2018OK, put the gloves on for me Gerald\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cDickie was a character and he was always fun. He was respected, admired and loved. He will be given a fond farewell.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018One of the best\u2019<\/p>\n
Barnsley, Bird\u2019s hometown football club, announced they would hold a minute\u2019s applause in memory of the umpire before their League Cup tie against Brighton on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Former England captain David Gower hailed Bird as \u201cone of the best umpires ever to take the field\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe certainly set himself high standards as an umpire, but that smile on his face at all times, whether he\u2019s giving you out or not out, whatever he was doing out in the middle, you just knew that Dickie was in the place that he loved best,\u201d Gower told the BBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just a very, very good umpire. He had a sense of humour. He had the ability in his own very quirky and slightly barmy way of being able to get on with everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graham Gooch, another former England captain, fondly recalled Bird\u2019s habit of becoming embroiled in unusual incidents during matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Headingley once they had a leaking pipe, right where Dickie was standing,\u201d said Gooch. \u201cComing up like a sprinkler. It could only happen to him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe leaves behind a legacy of sportsmanship, humility, and joy — and a legion of admirers across generations,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[35877,18919,696,35875,18836,2986,16558,634,35874,6179,7126,8985,1444,2740,35878,3025,111,139,69,10711,6507,213,765,35876,35879],"class_list":{"0":"post-39339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-35877","9":"tag-aged","10":"tag-announced","11":"tag-bird","12":"tag-club","13":"tag-county","14":"tag-cricket","15":"tag-death","16":"tag-dickie","17":"tag-died","18":"tag-dies","19":"tag-era","20":"tag-famous","21":"tag-former","22":"tag-harold","23":"tag-most","24":"tag-new-zealand","25":"tag-newzealand","26":"tag-nz","27":"tag-officials","28":"tag-overnight","29":"tag-sports","30":"tag-test","31":"tag-umpire","32":"tag-yorkshire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}