{"id":156322,"date":"2025-09-23T21:48:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/156322\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T21:48:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:48:13","slug":"dickie-bird-dies-tributes-to-yorkshire-cricket-umpire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/156322\/","title":{"rendered":"Dickie Bird dies: Tributes to Yorkshire cricket umpire"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘All the players loved him – cricket was his life’published at 14:28 BST<\/p>\n

14:28 BST<\/p>\n

Jonathan Agnew, BBC chief cricket commentator<\/p>\n

\"DickieImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

“He was one of those umpires to whom mishaps would occur. Bad light would always seem to come when Dickie was umpiring.<\/p>\n

“At Headingley, the whole ground flooded one time because of a problem with the drainage system. Dickie Bird was umpiring.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t give a lot out, especially LBWs. He was always quite safe and secure.<\/p>\n

“All the players loved him. He was brilliant at defusing situations on the field.<\/p>\n

“Fast bowlers like Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson – these big, aggressive characters – there could be some argy bargy on the field at times and yet they completely respected Dickie Bird.<\/p>\n

“If he stepped in and said, ‘c’mon lads, let’s get on with the game’, they stopped and got on with the game. He was massively respected. He was loved.<\/p>\n

“He never married. Cricket was his life – his whole life. He just loved cricket.<\/p>\n

“He was eccentric. If you are so devoted to anything there is probably some element of eccentricity about you and, in Dickie’s case, it was cricket.<\/p>\n

“He was a good player. He was always very nervous as a player – he’d be shaking, trembling and terribly anxious.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t have many shots as a batsman and got moved on from Yorkshire and came to Leicestershire.<\/p>\n

“He just belonged out there with his white coat and white cap.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘All the players loved him – cricket was his life’published at 14:28 BST 14:28 BST Jonathan Agnew, BBC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-156322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}