Dickie Bird Ends Journey On Home Ground (15 Jan 1996)

Electronic Telegraph Monday 15 January 1996

Bird ends journey on `home ground`

By Charles Randall

This report appeared in Saturday`s edition of The Daily Telegraph

LORD`S will be the venue for an emotional farewell this summer when Dickie Bird umpires his last Test match after 23 years at the top.

His impending retirement was announced yesterday while he was enjoying his usual 10-day winter holiday in Torquay.

The Yorkshireman returns home to Barnsley today to absorb the full impact of his decision, leaving behind a flurry of activity at the Livermead Cliff Hotel, where the switchboard became jammed with calls from the media.

Bird and Nigel Plews have been replaced on the International Cricket Council panel list by Peter Willey and George Sharp. Bird`s final appearance as a home-appointed umpire has been scheduled for England`s second Test against India at Lord`s on June 20-24.

He is to continue umpiring firstclass matches on the county circuit for the next two seasons, mostly away from the intrusion of the television cameras that made him a household name. Then, at the age of 65, he faces compulsory retirement.

His June diary date at Lord`s will be his 66th Test, added to his 92 one-dayers - easily a record on both counts - and there could be a few thousand moist eyes in St John`s Wood when this muchloved figure leaves the arena for the last time.

Bird indicated yesterday he had given serious thought to his decision as long ago as last summer. He said: "I want to go out at the top, to be remembered and to go out gracefully. I`ve had a tremendous run. Now is the time to bring on younger umpires to the Test match scene.

"A five-day Test match is much harder work now. You get tired and you are under the continual eye of the media. I`ll be 63 when the cricket season starts. It will be nice to go out at Lord`s because, to me, Lord`s has been my second home and it`s probably the best cricket ground in the world.

He rates the 1975 World Cup final between West Indies and Australia at Lord`s as the finest game he saw.

"Deep down I`ll miss it. I`ve given everything, and it`s going to be very very sad to leave. I`ve a lump in my throat just talking about it."

Harold Bird MBE, a former Yorkshire and Leicestershire batsman, began his first-class umpiring career in 1970, arriving for his first match early at 6.30 am. He was spotted by a policeman trying to scale the Oval wall. He made his first Test appearance in 1973 at his familiar Headingley, where he could admire a Geoff Boycott hundred against New Zealand close up.

As a nervous ultra-conscientious character, Bird attracted a fund of after-dinner stories - the one about Allan Lamb`s mobile phone ringing in his coat pocket while he was looking after it during play, for example, and the horror of how he sent grapes shooting across the floor of Buckingham Palace while lunching with the Queen, who sympathetically summoned the corgis to clear them up - but his reputation as an umpire remained sound, and the ICC chose him as their first international panel official in 1992 for Zimbabwe`s inaugural Test against India in Harare.

But Lord`s is a recurring theme in Bird`s experiences. He rates the 1975 World Cup final between West Indies and Australia at Lord`s as the finest game he saw.

Then, at Lord`s again, there was that West Indies bomb-scare of 1973, third day of his third Test, when every newspaper carried his picture.

The ground was to be evacuated, but Bird stayed. He recalled: "I thought the safest place was in the middle, so I sat on the covers with the West Indian supporters around me. They were all shouting: `Don`t worry, Mr Dickie Bird, the West Indies have already dropped the bomb - look at the score."`

He did not need reminding: West Indies 652 for eight, and England already following on.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (http: www.telegraph.co.uk)