Crickets

HE was the down-to-earth Yorkshireman with one of the most famous gestures in sport.

The way cricket’s most famous umpire Dickie Bird gave batsmen their marching orders — lifting his arm, oh so slowly, index finger outstretched — became his trademark.

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Miner’s son Dickie, who has died at the age of 92, was as much a part of British summers as, well, the sound of bat on ball.

He will be remembered as the man whose popularity broke down the divide between the game’s officials and players — also winning him a huge army of fans way beyond the boundary rope.

Generation after generation watched as Dickie, real name Harold Dennis Bird, umpired 66 tests and 69 one-day internationals, including three World Cup finals, with fairness and humour while reining in the most cantankerous of players.

Dickie, who never married, is expected to leave his multi-million- pound fortune — most of it made when he published his autobiography in 1997 — to children’s hospitals which he often visited.

After his death was announced by Yorkshire County Cricket Club, tributes flooded in for the lord of LBW — when umpire adjudges ball to have hit leg before wicket.

A club statement read: “Dickie Bird enjoyed an illustrious career as an international umpire, writing his name into history as the most famous and popular official in the game’s history.

“He is synonymous with Yorkshire cricket, where he has been one of the most loyal supporters.”

The club named the former Yorkshire batsman as its president in 2014 and said it was a role he held with “pride and distinction” as the club won two country championships during his tenure.

It added that Dickie, awarded an MBE in 1986 and OBE in 2012, had become known “not only for his umpiring excellence but also his eccentricities and warmth”.

Leading the tributes was Yorkshire and England cricket great Sir Geoffrey Boycott.

‘Never officious’

The legendary opening batsman said of the umpiring great: “Dickie was a character, always fun. He was respected, admired and loved. A cricket icon.

“He was brilliant because he made a lot of good decisions but also he had humour and a firmness. He could handle players.

“You could talk to him. He would listen. But chatting him up did not change his mind. No chance. He would laugh with you instead.

“He would never be officious. He just had a way of defusing situations. That was his strength, why he was rated all over the world as the best.”

Boycott first met Dickie in 1955, when they played for Barnsley Cricket Club — and the pair were also friends there with another Yorkshireman who later found fame, the late TV host Sir Michael Parkinson. The three would remain pals for life.

He added of Dickie’s cricket: “I was slightly in awe, nearly every time he went out to bat he would score a 50.

“I was shocked when he would come up to me and say, ‘Put my gloves on for me, Gerald’. I would say, ‘My name’s not Gerald, it’s Geoffrey’. It made no difference because he would say, ‘OK, put the gloves on for me Gerald’. He called me Gerald for years.

Former England captain and opening bat Graham Gooch also has fond memories of Dickie — a­nd the time one of his shots struck him during a match against Australia at Old Trafford in 1985.

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Gooch told talkSPORT: “He tried to get out of the way of the straight drive but it hit him on the ankle. He wasn’t averse to making a bit of a song and dance about things — and he had to go off for treatment.”

Dickie was also in the middle when Gooch played his most famous innings — scoring 333 against India at Lord’s in 1990.

But Gooch added: “Things always happened to Dickie in the field. At Headingley, once they had a leaking pipe, right where he was standing, coming up like a sprinkler. It could only happen to him.”

BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew said of Dickie: “He was a terrific umpire, the players loved him.”

Others taking to social media to pay respects ranged from ex-Prime Minister David Cameron to former Liverpool and Nottingham Forest striker Stan Collymore.

Dickie was born in Barnsley — where he still lived before his death, although he swapped a two-up, two-down terrace with outside toilet for a luxury 16th-century four-bedroom cottage on the edge of the Pennines.

His dad Harold worked in the coal mines from the age of 13 until 65, but wanted better for his son.

Dickie was a character, always fun. He was respected, admired and loved. A cricket icon.

Sir Geoffrey Boycott

Dickie said: “My father would not let me go down the mine. ‘No way!’ he said. He instilled in me that I would play sport for a living.

“He would get up at four each day and go to the pit and when he came home in the afternoon, although tired, would spend hours with me playing cricket and football.”

Dickie’s teenage years at Barnsley Cricket Club were happy ones, as were the friendships he made with Boycott and Parkinson.

He wept as he recalled his final conversation with Parky, the day before his friend’s death in August 2023, aged 88.

Dickie said: “We cracked a few jokes together, we had a few tears in our eyes and we said goodbye, goodbye to each other at the end of the phone call as if we had this feeling that we wouldn’t see each other again and we said goodbye and that was it.

“It was so sad when I heard the news [of his death]. I slumped in my chair and shed tears.”

Another childhood pal was Tommy Taylor, the England and Manchester United centre forward, who died in the Munich air crash of 1958.

Two years earlier, Dickie had made his first-class debut for Yorkshire as a right-hand batsman.

Fervent royalist

He left the club after three years, and spent three more years with Leicestershire before a knee injury forced him to hang up his bat and he switched to umpiring.

He became the first umpire to attract queues of autograph hunters and was so popular with the females that women hung pairs of pants on his statue in his home town.

So popular was he in Barnsley that a local car dealership gave him a motor emblazoned with his name, urging drivers to follow him to their showroom. On the driver’s side they painted him sat at the wheel in his umpiring whites.

Dickie was a fervent royalist who met Queen Elizabeth II 29 times and remembered the time he had lunch with her in 1990.

He also told how he was so nervous about lunch that he turned up at the gates of Buckingham Palace more than four hours early.

He said: “The Queen laughed when I told her and said, ‘You better have a drink’.

“Prince Edward joined us, we had a magnificent lunch, and then it was just the Queen and I in the lounge all afternoon.

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“She had a lovely sense of humour. We talked about cricket and horse racing. She said, ‘We think the world of you and we think you do a good job’. That were the best day of my life.”

The pair then kept in touch. “I had a letter from her a fortnight before she died,” Dickie said after her death in September 2022, aged 96.

“She asked about my health, ‘How are you keeping?’, I used to write back and say, ‘You need to keep going, Ma’am. You’ve got to get there — 100 if you can.

“She was the rock of this country. Magnificent.”

It was just the Queen and I in the lounge all afternoon. We talked about cricket and horse racing. She said ‘We think the world of you and we think you do a good job’. That were the best day
of my life.

Dickie Bird

Dickie was an ambassador for the Children’s Heart Surgery Fund at Leeds General Infirmary and is expected to leave his money to kids’ hospitals after being reduced to tears during visits across the UK.

It is not known how big his estate is but humble Dickie — who counted a £5 glass of wine at his local restaurant as a treat — donated £35,000 to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, £70,000 to Barnsley Hospital and £30,000 to the children’s fund at Leeds General.

He said: “When I visit these hospitals and see sick little babies needing surgery, or cut from their groin to their neck after heart operations, I break down in tears. I am not ashamed to admit it.”

His money-spinning, self-titled autobiography sold more than a book about Princess Diana, after her death the same year.

But ever-modest Dickie said: “Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would go to the bestsellers’ list, and beat even Diana’s book.”

His devotion to cricket left little time for much else, and he admitted he regretted never marrying and having children.

He said during the Covid lockdown: “If I miss having something in life, it’s having a family. I’ve had girlfriends. I nearly married twice. But I never married because in cricket you are never at home. I thought it would never work.

“It would have been wonderful to have a lad and watch him play. I missed that. But you can’t have everything. I gave myself to cricket, and it has given me a real good life.”

Sonny Curtis, a vintage rock ‘n’ roller who wrote the raw classic “I Fought the Law” and posed the enduring question “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” as the writer-crooner of the theme song to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has died at 88.

Curtis, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Crickets in 2012, died Friday, his wife of more than a half-century, Louise Curtis, confirmed to The Associated Press. His daughter, Sarah Curtis, wrote on his Facebook page that he had been suddenly ill.

Curtis wrote or co-wrote hundreds of songs, from Keith Whitley’s country smash “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” to the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back,” a personal favorite Curtis completed while in Army basic training. Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead were among other artists who covered his work.

Born during the Great Depression to cotton farmers outside of Meadow, Texas, Curtis was a childhood friend of Buddy Holly’s and an active musician in the formative years of rock, whether jamming on guitar with Holly in the mid-1950s or opening for Elvis Presley when Elvis was still a regional act. Curtis’ songwriting touch also soon emerged: Before he turned 20, he had written the hit “Someday” for Webb Pierce and “Rock Around With Ollie Vee” for Holly.

Curtis had left Holly’s group, the Crickets, before Holly became a major star. But he returned after Holly died in a plane crash in 1959 and he was featured the following year on the album “In Style with the Crickets,” which included “I Fought the Law” (dashed off in a single afternoon, according to Curtis, who would say he had no direct inspiration for the song) and the Jerry Allison collaboration “More Than I Can Say,” a hit for Bobby Vee, and later for Leo Sayer.

Meanwhile, it took until 1966 for “I Fought the Law” and its now-immortal refrain “I fought the law — and the law won” to catch on: The Texas-based Bobby Fuller Four made it a Top 10 song. Over the following decades, it was covered by dozens of artists, from punk (the Clash) to country (Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith) to Springsteen, Tom Petty and other mainstream rock stars.

“It’s my most important copyright,” Curtis told The Tennessean in 2014.

Curtis’ other signature song was as uplifting as “I Fought the Law” was resigned. In 1970, he was writing commercial jingles when he came up with the theme for a new CBS sitcom starring Moore as a single woman hired as a TV producer in Minneapolis. He called the song “Love is All Around,” and used a smooth melody to eventually serve up lyrics as indelible as any in television history:

“Who can turn the world on with her smile? / Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? / Well it’s you girl, and you should know it / With each glance and every little movement you show it.”

The song’s endurance was sealed by the images it was heard over, especially Moore’s triumphant toss of her hat as Curtis proclaims, “You’re going to make it after all.” In tribute, other artists began recording it, including Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Minnesota’s Hüsker Dü. A commercial release featuring Curtis came out in 1980 and was a modest success, peaking at No. 29 on Billboard’s country chart.

Curtis would recall being commissioned by his friend Doug Gilmore, a music industry road manager who had heard the sitcom’s developers were looking for an opening song.

“Naturally I said yes, and later that morning, he dropped off a four-page format — you know ‘Girl from the Midwest, moves to Minneapolis, gets a job in a newsroom, can’t afford her apartment etc.,’ which gave me the flavor of what it was all about,” said Curtis, who soon met with show co-creator (and later Oscar-winning filmmaker) James L. Brooks.

“[He] came into this huge empty room, no furniture apart from a phone lying on the floor, and at first, I thought he was rather cold and sort of distant, and he said ‘We’re not at the stage of picking a song yet, but I’ll listen anyway,’” Curtis recalled. “So I played the song, just me and my guitar, and next thing, he started phoning people, and the room filled up, and then he sent out for a tape recorder.”

Curtis would eventually write two versions: the first used in Season 1, the second and better known for the remaining six seasons. The original words were more tentative, opening with “How will you make it on your own?” and ending with “You might just make it after all.” By Season 2, the show was a hit and the lyrics were reworked. The producers had wanted Andy Williams to sing the theme song, but he turned it down and Curtis’ easygoing baritone was heard instead.

Curtis made a handful of solo albums, including “Sonny Curtis” and “Spectrum,” and hit the country Top 20 with the 1981 single “Good Ol’ Girls.” In later years, he continued to play with Allison and other members of the Crickets. The band released several albums, among them “The Crickets and Their Buddies,” featuring appearances by Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and Phil Everly. One of Curtis’ more notable songs was “The Real Buddy Holly Story,” a rebuke to the 1978 biopic “The Buddy Holly Story,” which starred Gary Busey.

Curtis settled in Nashville in the mid-1970s and lived there with his wife, Louise. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991 and, as part of the Crickets, into Nashville’s Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. Five years later, he and the Crickets were inducted into the Rock Hall, praised as “the blueprint for rock and roll bands (that) inspired thousands of kids to start up garage bands around the world.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press journalist Mallika Sen contributed reporting.

India’s most recent encounter with Pakistan in the Asia Cup was celebrated as a patriotic spectacle: a win dedicated to the armed forces and those affected by the Pahalgam attack. Such declarations, however, expose something deeper: a strategy of playing politics with sport, hypocrisy masked as principle.

Beneath this posturing and tokenism lies a contradiction too stark to ignore. This is not just sport. It is cynical theatre in which administrators, players and commentators attempt to ride on two boats at the same time. The hypocrisy is visible to anyone with a sane set of eyes.

At the heart of this contradiction is the relationship between India and Pakistan in cricket. Officially, India refuses bilateral cricket with Pakistan. The line is firm: no tours, no series and no diplomacy. The justification rests on national security, especially after the clash between the South Asian neighbours in May.

Indian artists are banned from collaborating with their Pakistani counterparts. Pakistani singers and actors once popular in India have been cut off on social media and otherwise. Indian celebrities themselves are trolled and shamed for past collaborations done on neutral grounds.

Yet the same ecosystem explodes with excitement when India faces Pakistan in multination tournaments. Matches are packaged as spectacles, marketed as the “greatest rivalry” and cashed in for billions in advertising revenue.

This duality is not accidental. Jay Shah, now serving in International Cricket Council (ICC) leadership, has been accused of pressuring Team India into playing Pakistan despite reluctance from within the camp. Sanjay Raut, a member of parliament in India, recently alleged that Shah’s hand forced the decision, turning the match into an obligation rather than a choice.

If true, this signals how far politics has penetrated Indian cricket administration for the sake of money and clout. The game is no longer simply sport but a vehicle for symbolic battles decided in boardrooms, not dressing rooms.

The hypocrisy becomes sharper when one considers the home environment. While Indians in other spheres faced online lynching for working with Pakistani colleagues even before the war, cricketers are being placed on a pedestal for defeating Pakistan. It is not only about double standards. It is about a calculated exploitation of sentiment.

Cricket is permitted as the only arena of “contact” because cricket sells more than most things in India. The ban on cultural exchange is explained as nationalism, but cricket is exempted in the name of multilateral obligations and commercial survival. Dedications of wins to soldiers and terror victims act as moral cover for what is essentially a business transaction. This is sheer hypocrisy and tokenism.

If India insists on involving politics in sport, consistency demands more. Look at Muslim athletes and countries known for boycotting matches against Israeli opponents. They forfeit games, risk sanctions and face bans. Whatever one thinks of their politics, their actions are clear, uncompromised and costly. They make a stand and face consequences.

India refuses bilateral cricket with Pakistan yet plays them in ICC tournaments because the money is too big to lose, especially when most of it comes home through viewership endorsements and advertisements. It tries to sail on two boats, waving nationalism with one hand while collecting profits with the other. The dedication of victories to the armed forces does not erase that contradiction. It exposes it.

The India-Pakistan rivalry itself is not what it used to be. Competitive balance has tilted drastically. India has dominated recent contests due to the Pakistani team’s poor form. Suspense is long gone, but the manufactured hype remains.

Broadcasters and advertisers pump the match as if it still defines the fate of nations. In reality, it defines the fate of sponsorship deals. The sporting value is hollowed out. The symbolic gestures after each victory only add to the theatre. In their latest match on Sunday, Indian players refused to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts.

Such dissonance turns patriotism into branding and erodes the dignity of national discourse. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, the ICC leadership and political voices close to the game must confront this contradiction. Cricket cannot remain both business and battlefield. A rivalry stripped of sporting essence but inflated with symbolism cannot endure. The Pahalgam victims deserve solidarity but should not be used as props for cricketing theatre. Sport deserves freedom from tokenism.

Instead of continuing this hybrid model of opportunism, India can opt for one of two choices. It can refuse to play Pakistan entirely, across all formats, including ICC tournaments. That would align deeds with words at the highest level. It would be costly in terms of ICC sanctions and revenues, but it would at least be consistent.

Or India can accept playing Pakistan as part of sport while removing politics and symbolic dedications from the game. That would mean treating cricket as cricket, not as a stage for nationalism.

India’s cricket establishment must choose one path. If it wants politics in sport, it must show the courage of consistency. If it wants to keep politics out, it must strip away the hollow dedications and patriotic posturing. The current approach of trying to sail on two boats is not sustainable. It fools no one, neither at home nor abroad. Cricket is being diminished by this hypocrisy and so is national dignity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The ban by India’s government of online betting games has ended the national cricket team’s sponsorship by Dream11.

India are looking for a new lead sponsor to replace Indian fantasy sports platform Dream11 after the government banned real-money online gaming last month, leaving the world’s richest cricket board scrambling to secure new revenue.

Dream11, which had signed a three-year contract worth about 3.6 billion rupees ($44m) running through 2026, can no longer sponsor the national team after the central government banned real-money online games as well as their promotion, including fantasy sports.

India’s upper house of parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025 last month.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which commands some of the world’s most lucrative broadcast deals thanks to cricket’s popularity and India’s vast population, set a September 16 deadline for new bid submissions.

The auction is unlikely to remain unsold for long, but with the Asia Cup starting on September 9, India may take the field without a front-of-shirt sponsor in the opening week, which includes the marquee match against rivals Pakistan on September 14.

The Economic Times reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter, that the board is seeking 35 million rupees ($397.6k) per match for bilaterals, and 15 million ($170.4k) per match for India’s fixtures in International Cricket Council and Asian Cricket Council tournaments in a three-year sponsorship cycle.

Over an estimated 140 games in the 2025-28 cycle, the BCCI expects to generate about 4.52 billion rupees ($51.3m), about 940 million ($10.7m) more than under Dream11’s deal, which was 3.58 billion ($40.7m) for the period July 2023 to March 2026 – an uplift of more than 20 percent.