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‘Dickie’ Bird to bowl ‘em over at cricket club

Ton Rowley
7/ 5/2008

BARNSLEY’S most famous son —Sir Michael Parkinson nothwithstanding — is coming to Glossopdale next month.

Legendary former cricket umpire Harold Dennis ‘Dickie’ Bird is making the trip over the Pennines to officially open Charlesworth and Chisworth Cricket Club’s new pavilion in June.

The pavilion, paid for by a local benefactor who wants to remain anonymous, will be handed over to the club by the contractor after more than six months of work on Monday.

Chairman Alan Burgoyne said it was special year for the Bankfield club to open its new pavilion.

"The club has been in existence since 1861 and this year is our 100th on this ground. The pavilion is a fantastic new facility, with two changing rooms and three showers," he said."The old one was a prefab building put up 50 years ago. In 1988 we rebuilt the scoreboard and changing rooms but really it is 20 years since we‘d done anything to it — it was almost falling down."

He added: "We’ve also developed the outfield with new turf."

As for how the club managed to attract Dickie, who is now 75 and scored over 3,000 first class runs for Yorkshire and Leicestershire between 1956 and 1964 before embarking on a famous career behind the wicket, Mr Burgoyne said: "Somebody in the village who is a member of the club knows Dickie and did the arrangements for us."

Dickie umpired his first Test Match in 1973 and retired at Lords in 1996, after umpiring 68 Test Matches, 92 one day internationals and four World Cup finals.

He will be coming to cut the ribbon on the new pavilion on Sunday, 29 June. The open day will include music from Glossop Old Band and a spit roast provided by Mettrick’s butchers. A club XI will also take on a Derbyshire and Cheshire League XI in a 20/20 match.