Dickie Fowl, who has died on the age of 92, broke the outdated rule {that a} sporting official ought to by no means be seen. However he broke it cheerfully and unwittingly, profitable respect and friendship by the standard of his decision-making, his pure heat and his abiding love of cricket. He was, by his personal admission, ‘married’ to the sport.
When he revealed his autobiography in 1997, a 12 months after he stood within the final of his 66 Assessments, his recognition meant gross sales handed 1,000,000, leaving Dickie – ‘Harold’ by beginning – to replicate that he had knocked Princess Diana off the highest of the best-sellers listing.
The remark was made fairly with out ego: Fowl, who transcended his sport in a fashion beforehand thought potential solely by the superstars, by no means stopped pinching himself.
He believed the guide’s success was right down to the truth that he and his ghostwriter, Keith Lodge, sports activities editor of the Barnsley Chronicle, spent 18 months working for 2 hours a night to get it proper. That, and his uncanny enchantment to a wider viewers.
And regardless of how typically he instructed his favorite tales about assembly the Queen 29 instances, or scaling the wall at The Oval as a result of he was a number of hours early, or answering a surreptitiously hidden cell phone whereas the bowler ran in, the general public lapped all of it up. He was a publishing phenomenon, an umpire and a cricketer, probably in that order.
The proceeds of his literary success allowed him to purchase a £70,000 black Jaguar, although it was a uncommon extravagance. Fowl, the son of a miner who, he mentioned, ‘by no means missed a shift’ from 13 by to 65, was of humble inventory: the john was exterior, and baths occurred in a bathtub in entrance of the fireplace.
Legendary former Check cricket umpire Dickie Fowl has handed away on the age of 92
Fowl (pictured in 1998) was one of many video games nice characters and he transcended the game
On Tuesday evening, Barnsley’s footballers will maintain a minute’s applause earlier than their EFL Cup match in opposition to Brighton at Oakwell, the place Fowl had popped in solely 10 days earlier. His ordinariness was a part of his allure.
So was his dependable, virtually childlike devotion to cricket. After rubbing shoulders with Geoff Boycott and Michael Parkinson at his residence membership, he had a nine-year first-class profession with Yorkshire and Leicestershire, which produced one nice day trip – an unbeaten 181 to arrange an innings win over Glamorgan at Bradford – and a lowly batting common of 20.
‘He was an excellent technical batsman,’ mentioned Boycott, ‘however nerves received the higher of him when stepped as much as play for Yorkshire.’
And when damage introduced a untimely finish to 1 profession, he transferred his nervous power to a different, shortly establishing himself as one of the crucial dependable umpires on the circuit.
His repute, it must be mentioned, rested on a sure conservatism: his first autobiography, in 1978, was referred to as Not Out. Regardless, the life-size bronze statue erected in Barnsley in 2009 exhibits Fowl elevating his proper index finger within the affirmative, as if it was the gesture which got here most naturally to him. And his first act in his last Check at Lord’s in 1996, moments after dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief, was to provide out Mike Atherton leg-before third ball to India’s Javagal Srinath.
Solely as soon as did he seem to overlook himself: throughout a Check in Trinidad between West Indies and Pakistan, he and the Jamaican official Steve Bucknor upheld 17 lbw appeals, leaving Dickie to enthuse: ‘It had been marvellous. A revelation.’ He shortly returned to kind, as if the entire thing had been a fever dream. The introduction of DRS was, he believed, a ‘stain on the sport’. It was in all probability simply as effectively the know-how arrived after he referred to as it a day.
However Fowl did the whole lot with such ingenuousness, such a twinkle, that it’s arduous to think about he wouldn’t have tailored to an age of critiques and umpire’s calls. For one factor, the very bowlers he would infuriate ended up loving him.
Australian fast Merv Hughes, whom Fowl as soon as berated for sledging Graeme Hick, described him as a ‘nice bloke’. Anil Kumble, the Indian leg-spinner, mentioned: ‘Dickie Fowl didn’t simply umpire the sport. He owned it, with coronary heart, wit and sophistication.’
Fowl (proper) shortly established himself as one of the crucial dependable umpires on the circuit
Fowl loved a stable, if unspectacular profession for his beloved Yorkshire, and later Leicestershire
He earned an MBE in 1986, an OBE 26 years later and after that the Yorkshire presidency
Boycott added: ‘Gamers all around the world revered and admired him for his firmness and equity, and he did it with a way of humour.’
Typically it was examined, for issues appeared to occur when he was umpiring. Throughout the 1973 Lord’s Check in opposition to West Indies, he sat forlornly on the covers out within the center whereas MCC handled a bomb scare that held up play for practically an hour and a half.
At Headingley in 1988, throughout one other West Indies Check, Fowl was heckled by spectators after a burst water pipe on the outfield halted play. ‘It’s not my fault, that!’ he protested in useless.
By now, although, his place in umpiring’s corridor of fame was safe, incomes him an MBE in 1986, an OBE 26 years later and shortly the Yorkshire presidency. He was a daily customer to county and worldwide matches at Headingley, and funded the Dickie Fowl Gamers’ Balcony with £125,000 of his personal money. One other £100,000, in the meantime, went to the neonatal unit for untimely infants on the native hospital.
He additionally stood within the first three World Cup finals, all at Lord’s, and claimed his trademark flat white cap was snatched from his head by a West Indian pitch invader. Years later, Fowl reckoned he had noticed the cap on the pinnacle of a London bus conductor, who instructed him: ‘Haven’t you heard of Mr Dickie Fowl? I pinched it off his head within the 1975 World Cup last.’
As with a lot else in his after-dinner oeuvre, the reality of the story was irrelevant: it was instructed with such humour that it developed a lifetime of its personal. Fowl as soon as mentioned his solely remorse was not having a household. He did have one, in fact – and cricket will miss him dearly.
