Dickie Bird
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| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Harold Dennis Bird OBE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
19 April 1933 Staincross, West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
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| Nickname | Dickie | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Batting style | Right-hand batsman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling style | Right-arm off-break | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Role | Batsman, Umpire | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Domestic team information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1956–1959 | Yorkshire | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1959–1964 | Leicestershire | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First-class debut | 16 May 1956 Yorkshire v Scotland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last First-class | 12 August 1964 Leicestershire v Essex | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| List A debut | 1 May 1963 Leicestershire v Lancashire | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last List A | 27 May 1964 Leicestershire v Northamptonshire |
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| Umpiring information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tests umpired | 66 (1973–1996) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ODIs umpired | 69 (1973–1995) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career statistics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Source: cricketarchive.com, 19 August 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Harold Dennis "Dickie" Bird, OBE (born 19 April 1933,Staincross, West Riding of Yorkshire, England) is a retired English international cricket umpire. In February 2014, Yorkshire announced that Bird is to be voted in as the club's president at their Annual General Meeting on 29 March.
The son of a miner, he gained the nickname 'Dickie' at school. He lives in the South Yorkshire village of Staincross. Bird failed his 11-plus and went to Raley Secondary Modern School, leaving in 1948 at the age of 15. For a while, he worked at a coal mine on the surface, but gave it up, deciding it was not for him. Instead, he set out for a career in sport.
When a knee injury put paid to playing football professionally, he followed his second love, cricket. In his early career in Barnsley, he played club cricket in the same team as Geoff Boycott, and journalist and chat show host Michael Parkinson, who became a lifelong friend. In 1956, Bird signed up with his home county, Yorkshire. Boycott has spoken highly of Bird's ability as a batsman, but feels that his attempt to forge a career as a county cricketer was hampered by his inability to control his nerves - although he was also not helped by stiff competition for the opening batsman's position: indeed, the very match after scoring his first (and only) County Championship century of 181*, scored in the absence of the regular opener Ken Taylor (playing for MCC), he was dropped when Taylor returned from international duty. Bird played only five more championship matches that season (plus the MCC versus Champion County match), four in the middle order rather than his preferred opener's position, and spent most of the season as "twelfth man": hardly a situation conducive to building confidence in his batting. Shortly before the start of the 1960 season he moved to Leicestershire, where he enjoyed a more or less regular place in the team at first - scoring over 1000 runs in his first season of 1960, including a century against the touring South Africans, which would prove to be his only other first-class century - but latterly faded out of the team, thanks to a combination of loss of form, confidence and a recurrence of his persistent knee injury: playing his last match in 1964. Overall, between 1956 and 1964, Bird played first-class cricket as a batsman for Yorkshire and Leicestershire in 93 matches, mostly in the English County Championship. After his county career, he coached and played league cricket before becoming an umpire.
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