If we say that this man Dickie Bird was the first world famous umpire then we would not be wrong in saying so because no one before him was as famous as an umpire and he made this into a viable profession for a lot of young budding Umpires. The best part is that Dickie Bird was a great first class player in England before he pursued umpiring. He was a right hand proper batter and scored over 3000 first class runs in 93 Matches with 2 hundreds as well. Dickie Bird has also been honored with the OBE which is the Order of the British Empire.
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Dickie Bird was someone that all the players loved and respected very much and while he was very strict on the field he was also like a friend to the players from the 1970s till the early 1990s. He had an umpiring career that spanned 23 years from 1973-1996 and the young umpires who came through all of them would go to him for help and guidance. This is his legacy that he made umpiring look cool. Let’s look at his Profile Career and Stats.
Profile
The full name of Dickie Bird is Harold Dennis Bird and he was born in Barnsley in Yorkshire England on 19th April 1933. As we discussed before, before becoming an umpire Dickie Bird was a very good first class player in England. He played from 1956-1959 for Yorkshire and then from 1959-1964 for Leicestershire. His first class career lasted till 1964 and since then he got into umpiring and from 1973 he was an international Umpire. Let’s look at his umpiring Career now below.
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Career
Dickie Bird stood in his first county match in 1970 and After 3 years of working hard he got to officiate his first Test match in 1973 which was between England and New Zealand at Headingley. Later on in 1975 Bird got into ODIs and he was the umpire in the first World Cup final in 1975 which the West Indies won and then would be the umpire in the 1979 and 1983 Works Cups finals as well and in 1998 he stood in his last match as an umpire thus bringing to a close a remarkable 28 year umpiring career which started in 1970. Be ua still regarded as the Greatest of all time and hopefully he has a long and healthy life.
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Umpiring Stats
Format | First Match as an Umpire | Last Match as an Umpire | Total Matches as an Umpire |
Test Cricket | England vs New Zealand at Headingley - 1973 | England vs India at Lord's - 1996 | 66 |
ODIs | England vs New Zealand at Manchester - 1973 | England vs West Indies at The Oval -1995 | 69 |
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Playing Stats
Competition | First Class Cricket |
Matches | 93 |
Runs Scored | 3314 |
Batting average | 20.71 |
100s/50s | 2/14 |
Top score | 181* |
Balls bowled | 48 |
Wickets | 0 |
Bowling average | - |
5 wickets in an innings | 0 |
10 wickets in a match | 0 |
Best bowling | - |
Catches | 28 |
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