{"id":211301,"date":"2025-10-19T16:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T16:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/211301\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T16:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T16:10:09","slug":"funeral-for-legendary-cricket-umpire-dickie-bird-in-barnsley-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/211301\/","title":{"rendered":"Funeral for legendary cricket umpire Dickie Bird in Barnsley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boycott&#8217;s eulogypublished at 14:51 BST<\/p>\n<p>14:51 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former England and Yorkshire cricketer Sir Geoffrey Boycott is reading out his eulogy for his friend of almost 70 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cI first met Dickie Bird when I was 15, at the time I was playing cricket for Hemsworth Grammar School,&#8221; Sir Geoffrey says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He called me Gerald for years.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Laughter echoes through the church as people are reminded of the character Dickie Bird was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He was invited to my daughter\u2019s 16th birthday party. He said to my daughter Emma, if I had a daughter I would want her to be like you, and quick as, she said &#8216;you can adopt me if you like&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After some more chuckles, Sir Geoffrey turns to his friend&#8217;s career in cricket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Surprisingly with all the nerves he had as a batsman, he became a great umpire because he could channel all that nervous energy into good decisions,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Dickie was refreshingly different. Eccentric but fair. It would be hard to find anyone who didn\u2019t like him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A man giving a eulogy at a funeral\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/6b9bb878-faca-4a10-a402-aa41bf0c34cd.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"6000\" height=\"4000\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Nick Potts\/PA Wire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boycott&#8217;s eulogypublished at 14:51 BST 14:51 BST Former England and Yorkshire cricketer Sir Geoffrey Boycott is reading out&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-211301","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\/211301","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=211301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}