Dickie Bird at 92: Letters, long walks and the love of cricket

Some mornings feel unusually lazy and aimless for Dickie Bird.

There are days when he rises early, completes his exercises, and runs around the backyard garden. At other times, though, nothing feels quite right.

“I find no purpose in getting out of bed. There have been many such days,” he says. “When I wake up and the first ray of the sun hits the curtains, I wonder if I even need to get up. What’s the purpose?”

Eventually, the 92-year-old — who sometimes calls himself a ‘young man’ — does get up. He makes breakfast, steps out for a walk, or strolls to the front gate of his 16th-century cottage to check the letterbox.

“Even now I get plenty of letters from all around the world,” Bird says, as we sip our second round of ‘full milk, no sugar’ coffee at a plush hotel just a stone’s throw from the sleepy Dodworth railway station.

Barnsley, where Bird was born and has lived all his life, is a half-hour’s drive from here.

“Every time I come here, I drive myself. It’s a nice little drive,” he says, nodding toward his Jaguar— his long-time companion, made possible, he says, by “all those book sales.” At one point, he considered hiring a chauffeur, but his doctors had other ideas.

“I told them, ‘Are you sure I can continue driving?’ and they said, ‘You must…”

So he did.

He doesn’t use GPS; he knows most of the roads around Barnsley and Dodworth by heart. He isn’t fond of smartphones either.

“I end up pressing random keys and dialling up wrong people,” he says with a smile. “Random messages get delivered, and I can only make or receive calls. That’s it for me. I wish I could throw this small, annoying thing…”

Instead, he prefers letters. Every morning, when he empties the mailbox, he carefully sorts through the correspondence and replies to each one.

“I reply to all of them. I read every letter and ensure that they receive my reply. That sort of keeps me busy…” he says.

A stroke in 2010 briefly disrupted his routine, but thanks to disciplined living and regular exercise, Bird lives without dietary restrictions. He still visits the Wetherby Whaler takeaway on Fridays for scampi and onion rings.

“I eat everything,” he says, stirring his coffee and adding more milk.

As we speak, a few old friends drop by to say hello, and some younger faces recognise him too. Bird cherishes these moments, the kind of social interaction he missed deeply during the COVID-19 lockdown five summers ago.

The following day, he’s set to travel to Scarborough to watch County matches involving his beloved Yorkshire. Whenever the club plays away, Bird tries to accompany them. It gives him a chance to watch cricket, yes, but also to reconnect with coaches, club members, and friends.

In winter, he turns his attention to football. A lifelong member of Barnsley Football Club, he attends matches there frequently. Having played both cricket and football in his youth, Bird holds both sports close to his heart. But as he puts it, he is “married to cricket.”

In his playing days, Bird shared a dressing room with Geoffrey Boycott at the Barnsley Cricket Club before signing a professional contract with Yorkshire at 19, earning a retainer of up to £650. In the off-season, he worked as a travelling salesman for a sports goods store.

Those memories cheer him up. But in more recent years, the silence at home has grown heavier. Many of his old friends have passed on.

“Time flies. I am beginning to feel my age now,” he says.

“It’s not easy to live on your own at this age, but I carry on the best I can. I never married, and got myself married to cricket. But if I missed anything in life is getting married and having a little lad, who would have probably also played cricket,” he says in a jest.

That, he says, would have been tremendous, “but it wasn’t to be.”

He played 93 matches as a right-handed batter for Yorkshire and Leicestershire, but his true renown came from umpiring. Bird officiated in 66 Tests and 69 ODIs before retiring in 1996, during India’s Test at Lord’s, a match that marked the debuts of Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid.

Beyond the field, he also served as president of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, using over £125,000 of his savings to build a new dressing room and gallery at Headingley.

“The old dressing room was in a poor shape, and teams weren’t willing to come and play there, so I decided to put my money and get the thing sorted. I did it,” he says.

Today, that viewing gallery is known as the Sir Dickie Bird Players’ Balcony. He makes it a point to attend every match played at Headingley, whether international or domestic. Earlier this year, during the opening match of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, Bird was there daily — watching cricket, catching up with old friends like Sunil Gavaskar and Roger Binny.

Though his days around the game have slowed, his connection to cricket remains strong. At home, much of his time is devoted to the Dickie Bird Foundation, which supports underprivileged children. Large portions of his savings have been donated to fund medical care for those in need, distributed through local hospitals.

“I have been doing it for years, and that gives me immense joy,” he says. Partway through our conversation, Bird reflects on his nickname.

Umpire Dickie Bird keeps a close eye as Madan Lal steams in and Jeffrey Dujon looks on during the 1983 World Cup final at Lord’s. 
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Photo Archives

“The nickname ‘Dickie’ was given to me at school. The Whites were ‘Chalkie’, all the Clarks were ‘Nobby’, and all the Birds were ‘Dickie’,” he says with a smile, adding that his friend Tommy Taylor, a former international footballer, became ‘Tucker’ and was referred to as Little Tommy Tucker.

From there, the memories come flooding in. He recalls the time he was invited to Buckingham Palace for lunch with the Queen.

“The Palace office called me to check if I could come and meet her, and I told the gentleman that I could walk all the way from Barnsley to London to meet the Queen,” Bird says. “I got to spend the whole day, have lunch at Buckingham Palace, and it was a great experience…”

These moments still make him light up. Bird also maintains a personal archive of newspaper clippings.

Umpire Dickie Bird (right) is greeted by India captain Mohammad Azharuddin after officiating his final Test match, at the end of the second Test between England and India at Lord’s, London.
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images

“I have been doing it since the age of 14, and even now, I read the newspapers and keep clippings of all the interesting stories and whatever they write about me,” he says. After a brief pause, he adds, “You must send me the clipping of the story when it gets published… I’ll add them to my collection…”

Cricket books and daily newspapers help fill the hours. And now and then, Bird picks up the phone to call Boycott or a few other old mates for conversations about cricket and life in general.

Cricket once gave him wings. It still keeps him afloat.

And when he’s alone at home, in his four-bedroom cottage overlooking the Pennines, life may feel quiet — even solitary. But he rises from the couch, takes a walk, jogs through the garden, and reads the cricket section in the paper. Suddenly, everything feels a little lighter. A little more like itself.

Life, again, is beautiful.