{"id":686308,"date":"2026-07-11T17:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T17:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/686308\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T17:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T17:07:09","slug":"grandad-marks-80th-birthday-by-umpiring-match-in-wiltshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/686308\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandad marks 80th birthday by umpiring match in Wiltshire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Coad, who used to work at a factory in Glastonbury which produced mini-skirts, added: &#8220;There was much amusement at the various abilities of each cousin or brother taking part.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As a family, we do like to have a gathering of the clan whenever we can. We&#8217;ve been talking about this for the last year and my kids grew up witnessing my love of cricket &#8211; so this seemed appropriate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Each player from the Coad family was gifted a cap which had &#8220;Grandpa&#8217;s people&#8221; on one side and &#8220;80&#8221; on the other.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The match began at 18:00BST when most of the ground was in shade, much to the appreciation of the cricketers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dexter Coad, 20, travelled from Yorkshire to take part in his grandfather&#8217;s birthday celebrations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;Everyone turned up from far and wide, I had a seven-hour journey down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Fonthill batted first and had a good score of 188, I think grandpa gave them some generous decisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He umpired the entire game and it was great. We made sure to have time for some celebratory beers once it was over as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coad, who used to work at a factory in Glastonbury which produced mini-skirts, added: &#8220;There was much amusement&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-686308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686308","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=686308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}