OL' DICKIE WOULD HAVE HAD KITTENS!

When Dom Sibley was struck on the pad by Yasir Shah in the third and final Test against Pakistan he was so far down the pitch you weren’t entirely sure whether the bowler was appealing for lbw or a blatant infringement of social distancing guidelines.

- MARTIN JOHNSON

And when, of all things, it was given out, it instantly conjured up an image of a spokesman for Barnsley Hospital issuing a grave bulletin for the six o’clock news. “The patient, Mr. Harold Bird, has suffered what can only be described as major trauma, and remains under heavy sedation in a specialist ward for the confused and bewildered.”

Dickie, as the great man is known by all, had a singular belief as to how his right index finger should be employed during his hours of work, in that it was never, repeat never, to be seen in the vertical position unless the ball he was adjudicating upon would, in his opinion, have been hitting halfway up off, middle, and leg stumps all the same time. He called his autobiography Not Out!, if only because the publishers probably considered Don’t Be Daft Lad, ‘It Wouldn’t ‘Ave ‘It Another Ruddy Set! to be a tad unwieldy.

There is, as it happens, one common denominator linking Bird and the umpire responsible for fingering Sibley, Michael Gough. Both played first-class cricket to a distinctly modest level, and while Bird eventually found fame as an adjudicator rather than someone who once opened the batting with Boycott, so Gough required only a handful of years of low achievement in county cricket before deciding to pack it in and try his hand at umpiring.