Cricket Diary: Weather finally catches up with Dickie (5 July 1997)

Saturday 5 July 1997

Cricket Diary: Weather finally catches up with Dickie

By Clive Ellis

DICKIE Bird has been doing his best to shed his reputation as the umpire who always brings rain.

Improbably, given the appalling weather, Bird registered his first rain stoppage of the season on Thursday, when Kent and Northamptonshire were restricted to an hour`s activity at Maidstone.

Even then the efforts of Bird and fellow umpire Vanburn Holder at ensuring some play late on failed to impress one spectator, a refugee from the hospitality tents, who harangued Bird for delaying proceedings.

Yesterday he was drowned out by booming public address announcements as he recorded a television interview.

Another umpire, Test official David Shepherd, was caught out during Kent`s game against Cambridge University

at Canterbury over the weekend. One scoreboard showed 111, the other 112, leaving the superstitious Shepherd uncertain as to whether he should perform his Nelson routine of hopping on one leg or not.

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JULIAN Thompson is happy to have the best of both worlds - for the moment at least.

Thompson, 28, could be said to spend his whole year in whites: from April to September as a pace bowler on the fringes of the Kent first team and for the rest of the year as a junior doctor, currently specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology.

He says the double life poses no problems as junior doctors work in six-month blocks and it gives him a more relaxed attitude to cricket, but if a year on he has failed to command a regular first-team place, he may become a full-time medico.

Thompson, destined to go to his grave as the man who inflicted the first (and to date only) pair on Brian Lara, has yet to need his medical skills on the cricket field. "But I think I could probably cope with a dislocated finger if the need arose," he said modestly.

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A SLIP of the word processor or a telling addition to the Hassan Raza age debate? Official literature about the Pakistan A touring side maintains that the (about) 15-year-old Raza, alleged to have become the youngest Test player in history last October, appeared in the under-51 World Cup.

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COUNTY scorers have just received updated software to help them deal with the computerised challenge of the Duckworth-Lewis system. The accompanying letter from PA Sport assures them that "the only visible change will be that the cursor is now more visible".

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THE hearts of Australian expatriates were warmed at the Lord`s Test by the sight of a great tradition from home - `dobbing` on the ground after the match. It`s nothing foul; it means kicking a foot- ball around Aussie rules-style and it has come to the cricket grounds of England. Even Mark Taylor and his men have been seen at it.

Kids and men take footballs along to all sports in Australia and hunt for space to "have a few dobs".

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Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)