DAVID BAIRSTOW had a favourite phrase which he unleashed upon people risking an unwelcome point of view: `You know three-quarters of seven-eights of sod all.' As he uttered it, his neck would redden, his chest swell to twice its size and his face contort with impatience. At such times, it was wise not to labour the point.

In truth, being a belligerent soul, Bairstow put it more crudely. He would Have had much cause for the phrase of late, because his suicide, at 46, has brought endless conjecture. Cricket may be a great fraternity, but it has a long and unhappy history of suicides, and Bairstow's death by hanging at the family home in Marton-cum-Grafton, North Yorkshire, on January 5 is among the most disturbing.

 Bairstow was the most popular yorkshire cricketer of his generation and deservedly so. He was a wicket-keeper-batsman of indomitable spirit. Unquenchable; neversay-die. He never conceded that a cause was lost, and would no more have shirked a challenge than a decent pint. The passion which burst from him in every game communicated itself to the crowd and invited their affection. `Good old Bluey,' they would chuckle as another foray finished in a cloud of dust. His was a simple creed: he was chuffed when he won, and huffed when he didn't. He was a joy to write about. Michael Parkinson once observed: `He personifies all the best virtues of Yorkshireness – he doesn't give a toss for reputation, fights back when cornered and doesn't even contemplate defeat.' It is heroic stuff. Yet that same Yorkshireness also proved to be his cross. His every forthrightness contributed to his destruction.

 Bairstow's later years were a time of heavy drinking, colossal mood swings, and a depressive illness which ultimately drove him to leave a devoted wife, Janet, to fight alone against breast cancer and become a single parent to the two young children whom they so adored. To dwell upon that is to look into the abyss.

From the moment that retirement loomed at the end of the 1980s, life failed Bairstow. The ultimate team fighter fought lonely battles, pursing feuds with former team-mates and administrators at Yorkshire, some of which dragged on for years. The impatience that drove him as a cricketer deepened his dissatisfaction in retirement as a series of business ventures failed to bring reward. The courage with which he had ignored a succession of debilitating injuries as a player translated into an inability to come to terms with the physical limitations of middle age. His love of the limelight became unbearable when he was overlooked. His own contribution to his personal misfortunes became appallingly clear. He crashed his car last autumn while driving back from Wetherby Races. He survived, but was injured badly enough to need a metal plate in his right arm, as well as collecting a drink-driving charge that was due to be heard the week after his death.

But wonderful memories of David Bairstow still barge into the mind as belligerently as he used to bustle to the crease. To watch him at his work throughout the 1970s and `80s was to understand a little more about the merits of boundless faith, and honesty of performance. By those virtues alone, he leaves a considerable legacy. No-one captured his essence more succinctly than Phil Carrick, a team-mate since schooldays in Bradford. `He wasn't a great batsman, maybe he wasn't even a great wicketkeeper,' Carrick said, ` but he was a great cricketer.'

It is tempting to regard Bluey as one of the last of the old-fashioned county cricketers. Hard-drinking, heavysocialising, a man to whom you could trust your hangover. If you heard an assertive, booming voice at the centre of the best pub in town, its owner was likely to be a square-shouldered Yorkshire wicketkeeper with a squat nose and a low centre of gravity. He really was aghast when young Yorkshire professionals preferred instead to sip bottles of lager in trendy bars, as far away from the public as possible. David liked to be on firstname terms with the entire crowd, or at least the ones he was talking to.

Last summer, on a rare visit to Headingley which encouraged hopes that he might make his peace with the county, he looked one injured young fast bowler up and down. `You don't want to be taking those pills,' he said. `You want to get some good Tetley's down you.' Equally, it was a wonderfully appropriate moment in 1990 when Bairstow, in the West Indies as a tour guide for Fred Rumsey, was pulled out of a rum distillery to make up the England numbers against Barbados.

Four Tests was probably a fair return, but today's emphasis on distinct Test and one-day squads would surely have won him many more than his 21 one-day caps. That was time enough to contribute to cricket legend, courtesy of a remark to his Yorkshire teammate, and great pal, Graham Stevenson, when he went out to bat in a day-nighter at Sydney. Not for them the historic exchange between George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes of `We'll get `em in singles'. `Evening old son,' said bluey. `We can piss this.' And they did.

Bluey was blessed with eyesight so acute that he could berate someone for moving behind the bowler's arm at Bradfod when he was actually playing at Harrogate

 IT WAS THE Yorkshire captaincy that he cherished above all. The chaotic circumstances of his elevation were remarkable even for the White Rose. In the aftermath of the pro-Boycott revolution in 1983, as the gentrified committee that had sought to sack their abrasive opening batsman was overthrown, Bairstow's popularity was indispensable. They voted to make him captain, not because they spoke well of his tactical nous – they often didn't – but because they hoped he might berate the county into unity. Even then, in a split vote, they offered Bairstow the captaincy only on the understanding that he would concede the wicket keeper's role to Steve Rhodes. Brian Close, the cricket chairman, was charged with making the phone call, and returned to relate that Mr Bairstow was not at all happy with the request. The committee, in an immediate about-turn, voted that he could keep the gloves after all; Rhodes moved to Worcester.

For three years, Bairstow led one of the weakest sides in the county's history, and he would not hear a word against them. In defiance of such meagre resources he attacked at every opportunity, proclaiming `If we win ten and lose ten we'll win the Championship.' Derek Hodgson, now editor of the Yorkshire yearbook, famously depicted his style as `a series of uphill cavalry charges'. The captain led the way, naturally, convinced that if he stuck his chest out far enough, the bullets would bounce off it. `We are a cricket club, not a debating society', he lectured the malcontents, the prejudiced and the pessimists who were dragging the country into the mire.

`Evening old son': Bairstow (right) and Graham Stevenson race off after putting the Australians to the sword at the SCG in 1979–80

 Bairstow's pride in the all-conquering nature of his native county knew no bounds. As Yorkshire captain, he once took his struggling band to Northampton. Northants were having a successful season and, the night before the game, Bluey asked a journalist how he thought Yorkshire would fare. A relactant summary of Northamptonshire's strengths was listened to through several shades of red, each one deeper than the other. `Aye', Bluey interrupted eventually. `Well you have forgotten something. We're Yorkshire and We're going to stuff `em'. They didn't. of course, but Bluey would never batray his creed. In that, he was the last of Yorkshire's old breed. But it didn't blind him to the need to change; he was among the first to campaign surreptitiously for the abandonment of the traditional reliance on players born within the county boundary.

He might have taken yorkshire to the Benson & Hedges Cup in his first season, only for Warwickshire's Paul Smith, with semi-final victory beckoning, to dismiss him with a blinding catch on the cover boundary. Instead, it fell to Phil Carrick, Bairstow's successor, to acheive the feat in his first season. On a jubilant coach journey from Lord's to Scarborough, where Yorkshire were due to play a Sunday League match the following day, Bluey sat largely alone at the front, staring into the middle distance, reflecting on the bad days.

Something always happened at Scarborough. Once, with Yorkshire on the verge of victory against Kent, a vital five minutes were lost when Bernard Wilson, an examiner from South Yorkshire, sat behind the bowler's arm to make a lone protest about the loss of members' seating. Kent finished nine down; Bairstow was apoplectic. Another time, Ian Swallow stood underneath a skyer and heard Bluey bark four nick names before the ball fell to earth. `Swalls! Chicken! Geroge! Young'n!' he bawled with increasing desperation. Swallow, by now suffering a severe identity crisis, barely laid a hand on the chance.

Bluey was blessed with a stentorian voice, and eyesight so acute that he could berate someone for moving behind the bowlers arm at Bradford when he was actually playing at Harrogate. The press box at Scarborough is high above the sightscreen, affording, perfect views if you are lucky enough to get a seat, and during one festival match at Scarborough, the complimentary wine had been liberally dispensed, so much so that nobody noticed that play was about to resume `Will you bloody lot sit down!' bawled Bairstow from behind the stumps. Six grown men, and several bottles of wine, were skittled to the ground in shock.

He possessed a powerful stare, too. Once, when Geoffrey Boycott was not exactly addressing himself to the demands of a run chase, he marched out to glare meaningfully at the pavilion clock. The funniest run chase of all, though, occurred during Carrick's captaincy. Bluey grabbed a dressing-room nap until it was his turn to bat, and while he was dreaming of derring-do – encapsulated in his vivid phrase `you pitch it up and I'll twat it'– the target was deemed too steep. The problem was that nobody thought, or dared, to tell him. At one end, Bairstow was manically sweeping the spinners, or clubbing the seamers on, the up; at the other, Swallow, trying to make the grade as a No. 3, was loyally blocking. Their mid-pitch conferences, complete with gestures to the dressing-room, were a joy.

Not that Bairstow found such episodes funny – he was too straightforward a cricketer for that. He was once bowled at Harrogate when the ball looped off his body to a great height and he headed it onto his stumps, quite a slip for a man who had represented Bradford City as a stocky, bustling striker. The crowd hooted fondly at his misfortune, stilled only by the slam of the dressing-room door. The game was not to be laughed at, nor cheated. He never feigned an injury, nor invented a catch. When athlete's foot broke out in the Yorkshire dressing-room, Sergeant Bairstow CID left team-mates cowering (and sniggering) before him.

 IT WAS AT Scarborough that Bairstow became embroiled in a famous row with the team manager, Raymond Illingworth. Basic subject: honesty, and the lack of it. Their stand-up in Hughie's Bar in the Royal Hotel, a favoured drinking haunt of the time, was the talk of the town for weeks. Bairstow never stayed in the Royal again, furious that a private argument had become the source of gossip. `But David,' a placatory voice told him, `we could hear it in the street, lad.'

At Scarborough, again, Bairstow was dropped by his successor, Phil Carrick, when he was on 999 first-class dismissals for Yorkshire. He stomped to the ground proclaiming that his replacement, the emerging Richard Blakey, `couldn't keep bloody chickens', and maintained a 20-minute monologue that was awesome in its intensity, except when it was innocently interrupted by Yorkshire members eager to wish him a cheery good morning. He got the thousand in the last match of that summer, at Trent Bridge when Paul Johnson was caught off the bowling of his staunchest ally, Arnie Sidebottom. Bluey used to take in Arnie's edges with the milk.

If the desperate yells of encouragement from behind the stumps of `Come on Arn!' was the sound of the Bairstow captaincy, there is no doubt about the sound of a Bairstow innings: `Run, run, run, run, run,' shouted with the unflagging excitement of a true enthusiast. There was no sense of negotiation in a Bairstow call; his partners just gritted their teeth and ran like hell. He scored 13,961 first-class runs, more than any other Yorkshire wicketkeeper. Some days it seemed that he might have scampered every one of them. On others, such as when he masterminded an astonishing B&H victory at Derby in 1981 he Bludgeoned the ball to all parts. Yorkshire were 123 for 9, chasing 203. Such was Bairstow's defiance that he finished unbeaten on 103, hoisting David Steele's left-arm spin for three bicepbusting sixes over the old grandstand. Mark Johnson, the last man, was grateful to manage four.

In his later years, Bluey's hands gave him a lot of pain, which the less charitable put down to the fact that he had never taken the ball cleanly. He was not particularly outstanding standing up. But in his pomp, on a quick, bouncy pitch, he was a wonderful sight, fielding the quicks at full stretch, slinging it high while still in mid-air and unleashing a bellowing appeal before invariably catching the ball as it fell to earth. His 11 catches against Derbyshire at Scarborough in 1992 equalled the world record, and his record of 10,000 first-class runs and 1000 dismissals for Yorkshire is unique.

 Yorkshire have fielded only 10 regular keepers from Joseph Hunter in 1878 to Richard Blakey 120 years later, four of them from Bradford. Those fortunate enough to witness Bairstow's debut against Gloucestershire at Park Avenue in 1970 sensed he would be something special. He was still a crinkly-haired schoolboy at Bradford's Hanson Grammar School when Yorkshire offered him a four-match trial. On the second day, he took his English A-level at 6am, and if he did not deal particularly impressively with Marlowe and Milton at such an hour, later on he despatched four Gloucester batsmen.

Walking across the car park on the first morning, he happened across Geoffrey Boycott's car and, being a polite lad, offered to help his hero carry his bags to the dressing-room. The journey completed, Boycott offered an autograph as a gesture of appreciation. `Chuffing hell,' said Bluey. `I'm bloody playing.' And for the next 20 years, boy, did he do just that.

A stentorian voice: a successful appeal for a run-out against Venkat at The Oval in 1979. On this, his Test debut, Bairstow also made his highest score for England– 59

 DAVID LESLIE BAIRSTOW

Born Sept 1, 1951 First-class career (1970–90): 13,961 runs at 26.44, 10x100, HS 145 Yorks v Middx, Scarborough, 1980

1099 dismissals (961 ct, 138 st) 9 wkts at 34.22 Yorkshire captain 1984–86

4 Tests ( 1979–81): 125 runs at 20.83, ct 12, st 1

21 ODIs (1978–84): 206 runs at 14.71, ct 17, st 4   

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