Legendary umpire Dickie Bird strolls around Headingley with Bumble ahead of his 90th birthday

There is only one place we could bring Dickie Bird to mark this milestone. The Yorkshireman is 90 not out on Wednesday and to celebrate his fine innings, Mail Sport pick him up from his cottage in Barnsley — aptly named White Rose — to take him to his second home, Headingley.

It is his first visit in six months and he is greeted like a long-lost friend by stadium staff. But there is another familiar face waiting eagerly for him in the car park, a man Dickie once umpired in a Test match and then officiated alongside. ‘All right, lad,’ says Mail Sport’s David Lloyd as he strides over to embrace the birthday boy. ‘How old are you now? Have you packed up umpiring?’

‘I think I have,’ chuckles Dickie, who then leads his guest interviewer on a walk around the ground he played at for Yorkshire from 1956 to 1959.

First, Dickie shows Bumble the clock bearing his name above the Western Terrace. ‘I call it the Dickie Ticker,’ grins Bumble.

Then, he takes him to the Dickie Bird Players’ Balcony at the Kirkstall Lane End, which he funded with £125,000 of his own cash. ‘Jesus, Dick, lend us a fiver!’ jokes Bumble. 

Dickie Bird (left) met up with David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd at Headingley ahead of his 90th birthday

Bird was a former Yorkshire cricketer before spending several years as a legendary umpire

The ‘Dickie Bird’ clock above the Western Terrace at Headingley. Bird calls it the ‘Dickie ticker’

‘I’d have knocked that up for £20,000. He’s seen you coming that bloke!’

The laughter continues over the course of 90 minutes as two of the game’s best-loved characters — not to mention Roses rivals — swap stories of their long lives in cricket.

BUMBLE: We are here at Headingley and you are Mr Headingley. How do you feel when you come here? Is it like you are coming home?

DICKIE: I remember when I came for my first net with Yorkshire and I walked through the main gates. It was amazing. I just get that feeling. The buzz and the excitement.

BUMBLE: It’s a northern thing. People ask me all the time what my favourite ground is and I love Old Trafford and Headingley.

DICKIE: You must have Test matches at Old Trafford and Headingley. It’s the people, history, the characters around. There are no characters around now.

BUMBLE: I am going to go back to one of your old chairmen. He was a real firebrand, Brian Sellers. Do you remember him?

DICKIE: Aye, I do, he dropped me when I got 181 not out! Nobody else got any runs in the match against Glamorgan. I thought: ‘Surely, I’ll get a game next match.’ I was taking my pads off and Sellers walked in the dressing room. He said: ‘Tha’s played well there Birdie, but get your head down, you’ll be in the second team next match,’ and then walked out of the room!

BUMBLE: How do you see the club now? It has changed immeasurably and it’s had a difficult time this last couple of years. That must be upsetting?

Bird is a club legend at Yorkshire and is known as ‘Mr Headingley’ after his career exploits

His umpiring career began in 1970 after playing for cricket Yorkshire between 1956 to 1959

DICKIE: It is really upsetting because Don Bradman once said to me: ‘You know Dickie, the greatest club in the world is Yorkshire County Cricket Club.’ People have been down for the last two years. It has been very depressing. But Yorkshire will come strong again. I think this side will win the Championship (Division Two) this year.

BUMBLE: What is the best Yorkshire team you’ve seen?

DICKIE: I played in it. The County Championship-winning side of 1959. I thought that was the best era. Brian Close, Raymond Illingworth, Fred Trueman.

BUMBLE: How fast were Fred?

DICKIE: Freddie Trueman and Dennis Lillee are the two best opening bowlers I’ve seen. It upsets me a bit when the present day presenters on television say Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad are the best two bowlers England have ever had. Did they see Brian Statham and Trueman?

BUMBLE: It’s opinions and subjective. One of the best lines I ever heard was on Test Match Special with Brian Johnston. Darren Gough was emerging on the scene and Brian said to Fred, as he always used to wind him up: ‘This chap Gough must be the quickest bowler Yorkshire have had since the war.’ To which Fred said: ‘I can bowl faster than that in a Mackintosh and a pair of Wellingtons!’

DICKIE: He always came out with something. What a great bowler. Anderson and Broad are great bowlers, but there were so many greats around in your era, David. You went to Australia to play against Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. You were ducking and weaving.

BUMBLE: I wanted to come home. I was shouting for me mother!

Bird (centre) was lucky enough to play with several greats of the game including Fred Trueman

Dickie umpired 66 Tests and 69 one-day internationals between 1973 and 1996, including three World Cup finals. His last match in the middle was a Test between England and India at Lord’s, when the players formed a guard of honour and he received a standing ovation from the crowd.

Bird is one of the most recognisable sporting officials of all-time

BUMBLE: You won’t remember, but we once stood together as umpires. I was a novice and we were at the Parks, Oxford University. I said: ‘Give me some tips.’ You said: ‘These lads here, Oxford University, they are studying and it’s not right if we give them out lbw, so let them carry on. But any of the pros, you can give them out!’ It always stuck with me that. How do you see umpiring now?

DICKIE: I think you could umpire a Test match now. No problem. Umpiring now is done by a machine. It has certainly helped the umpire but I think it has taken away all the authority the umpire had.

BUMBLE: Umpiring was your life. You were unique in what you did. You were everyone’s friend because of one word: respect. You had fantastic respect from everyone that played. You must have felt that?

DICKIE: I could. I will tell you about an incident here in a Test match, England versus Australia. Merv Hughes was bowling from my end to Graeme Hick. He kept playing and missing and Merv’s language was terrible. So I stopped the game and said: ‘Could I have a word with you Merv? I want you to stop swearing and be a good boy.’ And he looked at me and said: ‘Dickie Bird, you’re a legend, I won’t swear again.’

BUMBLE: And did he?

DICKIE: He came in next ball, Hick played and missed, and I’ve never heard language like it in all my life! I was out in Australia with my autobiography a few years later, I was sat in my room in my hotel and there was a knock on the door. Who do you think it was? Merv. With a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates. He is a wonderful man.

The 89-year-old reflected on his infamous incident with Australian Merv Hughes when the fast bowler used some ‘terrible’ language but insisted Hughes is a ‘wonderful man’

Bird (right) umpired 66 Tests and 69 one-day internationals between 1973 and 1996, including three World Cup finals – pictured above next to Sir Ian Botham (left) in 1985

BUMBLE: If you are talking cricket, you have to mention Shane Warne. It was a great sadness when Warne died. Did you umpire him?

DICKIE: I umpired his magic ball at Old Trafford. I was stood at his end. His first Test match in England and it was his first ball. It pitched outside the leg stump, turned and hit the top of Mike Gatting’s off stump. I said to Shane Warne after he bowled that delivery: ‘Young man, you will put your name in the record books.’ He never forgot those words. Lovely lad. Wherever I was, if he saw me he’d say: ‘Come and have a drink.’ I’m going to tell you another great bowler at the time and he helped Shane Warne a lot.

BUMBLE: Let me guess. Abdul Qadir.

DICKIE: Correct. What a bowler.

BUMBLE: When Warnie was tormenting us out in Australia and I was England coach, Abdul Qadir was out in Melbourne. So we got in touch with him and asked him to come and bowl at our boys. We gave him 100 dollars, which was threepence, and he came and bowled all day. He was bowling at Nasser Hussain. Everyone was watching and Nasser came down to me and said: ‘Get him out of my net, he is making me look like a clown!’

Bird was umpire for Shane Warne’s ‘ball of the century’ at Old Trafford in the Ashes in 1993

Dickie never had a wife because he was ‘married to cricket’ and the game remains his one true passion. Whatever the fixture at Headingley, you will always find him there, sitting in the same seat behind the bowler’s arm at the Kirkstall Lane End.

BUMBLE: So you’re 90 now, how do you keep yourself busy?

DICKIE: I do a lot of training. I lap round the local football ground, doing short sprints and some general exercise. It occupies the brain. I don’t travel now. At my age, I don’t want the hassle of airports and all this buggering about on planes. I shall watch Yorkshire. I like to go to the Test matches. That will be it.

BUMBLE: How do you view Twenty20 cricket? Do you come along to the matches?

DICKIE: Yes, I come to watch Twenty20. I enjoy them. It puts bums on seats, David, and that’s what people want.

BUMBLE: And what about this 16.4 competition that they’ve got? They call it the Hundred but it’s 16.4 overs.

DICKIE: Again, it puts bums on seats. Youngsters enjoy it. It’s what the public want. I think the day may come where you’ve only got one Test series — England and Australia.

BUMBLE: The Ashes are coming up this year, you’ll be watching. Who is going to win that?

DICKIE: You have played against Australia for England, David, you never write an Australian side off. They will have a good attack, who bowl well in English conditions. England may find the Australian attack a lot better than some they have played against. But having said that, this present England side will never get a better chance of beating Australia. I’ll put this to you, Jonny Bairstow should be fit for the Ashes, so who do you leave out?

Bird pictured in the dressing room as he waited to umpire his final County Championship match between Yorkshire and Warwickshire at Headingley in 1998

He never had a wife because he was ‘married to cricket’ and the game remains his one true passion

BUMBLE: Jonny Bairstow will be keeping wicket and batting No 7.

DICKIE: But I think this wicketkeeper, who is keeping wicket now (Ben Foakes), is the best in the world.

BUMBLE: I agree, but we’ve had this situation before. Let’s go back to Bob Taylor. He didn’t get in because of Alan Knott. Jack Russell didn’t get in because of Alec Stewart. You could argue that they were better wicketkeepers but the balance of your side is that you want your batter. And Bairstow is an absolute slot-in at No 7 unless they do a complete turnaround and say he opens.

It must make you proud when you’ve got a number of Yorkshire players in England’s team. We always said if Yorkshire are strong, England are strong. Now what about this Harry Brook? You probably saw his first game when he came through as a kid?

DICKIE: My foundation gave him £750 to buy his sports equipment and I presented him with the cheque here. It was the first time I’d seen the kid play and I said then he’d play for England.

No sporting official has ever enjoyed fame like Harold ‘Dickie’ Bird. There is a life-size bronze statue of him in his hometown of Barnsley and his 1997 book is one of the best-selling sports autobiographies of all time. He also has an MBE and OBE but his brushes with royalty were not just reserved to receiving those gongs.

Bird (right) has a life-size bronze statue in his hometown of Barnsley, while he also has an MBE and OBE 

BUMBLE: Something else I’ve never done, you’ve met the Queen a number of times?

DICKIE: 29 times!

BUMBLE: Get off! Did you go and stop there?

DICKIE: I couldn’t believe it. I was sat at home one November day and the phone rang. The voice said: ‘This is the master of the household from Buckingham Palace. I’ve been commanded by Her Majesty the Queen to see if you are available to have lunch with her.’ I said: ‘If I’ve been invited to have lunch with her at Buckingham Palace, I’ll walk it from Barnsley.’ He said: ‘That’s all I want to know, the invitation will follow.’ And it did.

I had to be at Buckingham Palace for 1pm for lunch and I was outside the Palace gates at 8 o’clock in the morning. I got there early. I thought: ‘I better not miss this one.’ All there was having lunch with her that day was myself and Prince Edward, and he had to go because he had another engagement. So, there was just the Queen and me sat at this oval table in Buckingham Palace. It was a proud moment. After lunch, I sat in the lounge with her all afternoon talking different sports. I left at 5 o’clock. It was the greatest day of me life.

BUMBLE: What a day! Brilliant. Dick, I think that’s been terrific. What a brilliant chat we’ve had in the sunshine. And we’ll do it again in 10 years’ time!

Bird (back to camera) also revealed how he met the late Queen on 29 different occasions