‘Umpire’ derives from the French noumpere (‘oumpere’ in Middle English). It means “without peer or equal”, which neatly describes umpire Harold Dennis Bird—‘Dickie’ was a nickname from school—who has died at 92. Cricket is a wide church welcoming characters of all hues, making national heroes of umpires and spectators too. The famous barracker Yabba (Stephen Gascoigne) has a statue at the Sydney Cricket Ground. There’s one of Bird at Barnsley, where he was born.

Dickie Bird loved cricket, and cricket loved him back. Of few can this be said honestly. As the broadcaster Michael Parkinson put it, “Like a tree bent and moulded by the prevailing wind, so the curve in Bird’s spine, the hunch of his shoulders, and the crinkled eyes as he inspected the world have been sculpted through a lifetime’s dedication to cricket…”

What made Bird stand out, apart from being one of the best umpires—even if he was characterised as a ‘non-hanging’ judge when it came to leg-before decisions—was his legendary worrying. This, too, is well captured by Parkinson, with whom he played club cricket (as he did with Geoff Boycott, his colleague at Barnsley and Yorkshire).

“He is adept at inventing worry,” wrote Parkinson, “about getting to Heathrow to catch his flight to........

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