VHS : Dickie Bird's Greatest Cricketing Moments And Silliest Points

Rating: - Video has good content, but presentation very unnatural.
Good old Dickie's credentials are pretty unimpeachable, both as a devoted servant of cricket and as one of the nicest and most modest men on the planet. Understandable, then, that having retired from umpiring the professional game, he would be asked to put his name and face to a number of different enterprises, of which this video is the latest example.

It's fair to say, I think, that Dickie's main talents lay in that astute eye and occasionally tetchy air of authority which commanded respect and affection from players and viewers alike. Unfortunately, perhaps, this video casts him in a rather less familiar role, and one in which he looks distinctly less comfortable. For as he presents this random mixture of cricketing clips and highlights, which ranges from familiar favourites like Boycott's 100th 100 to more recherché moments such as Lamb's 18 off the last over to beat Australia in 1987, one thing becomes creepingly apparent: while it is undeniably Dickie who is wandering around Headingley talking to the camera in the first person, his words have obviously been penned by someone else, and (most gratingly of all) someone whose rather precious speech patterns and turns of phrase ('one of the many sixes that decorated his innings') bear little resemblance to Dickie's own down-to-earth diction. The result is that Dickie frequently appears baffled by pre-prepared polysyllabic phrases which he is apparently seeing for the first time as he reads them off the cue cards. To offset his evident discomfort, the poor man sporadically attempts to hide his uncertainty about intonation and content behind a randomly interspersed grin and a stilted wave of the hands, more akin to a nervous tic than the sure-fire sign language and confident presence of his umpiring days.

Ironically, it is in the least structured and pre-prepared section of the video, an informal chat with former England all-rounder Ian Botham at the latter's home, that Dickie seems most assured. Nice to see two of England's greatest contributions to world cricket perched on stools by a snooker table, swapping andecdotes and setting the sporting world to rights, not to mention reliving the improbable glories of the 1981 Ashes series just one more time, complete with footage. During that footage, incidentally, and for the one and only time on this video, a small piece of narration is handled by a voice other than Dickie's. There is a distinctly more plummy home-counties timbre to the delivery of 'A hero indeed, but with Australia still needing only 130 runs to win, into the breach stepped Bob Willis.' Suddenly, and for practically the only time in the video, the words seem to fit the speaker. Could this be the mystery man behind Dickie's awkward soliloquies (and indeed the video as a whole)? I think we should be told.

None of which criticism, of course, affects the main reason why most cricket fans would buy a video like this. The footage is eclectic and memorable enough in places, being a well chosen mixture of historical overview and on-field heroics. Owners of other such videos will find a few newish fielding and batting highlights too recent to appear on previous compilations, such as England's last clash with Australia, although it must be said that the criteria for inclusion sometimes seem tenuous at best. The section where Dickie takes us through a 'nightmare over' begins as billed, with a couple of freakish occurrences and umpiring conundrums, but soon spirals into any random shots the producers could lay their hands on, most bizarrely of Derek Pringle eating a sandwich in the pavilion while festooned with several pairs of batting gloves. 'Derek has obviously heard,' reads Dickie off another cue card, 'that many hands make light work.' Hmmm.

All in all, then, certainly worth a look if you're a fan of cricket compilation videos, but perhaps in spite of, rather than because of, Dickie Bird's appearances. This is far from a criticism of the man himself; he is an engaging and forthright character whose contribution to the game is beyond question. And this is precisely why, one might suggest, he deserves a little better than being billed as the 'host' of his 'own video', only to end up reading out someone elses's prompts.