David Lloyd has brought up his half-century in cricket — he’s been a player, coach and umpire, and is now a much-loved commentator and Sportsmail columnist.

Here, in extracts from his very entertaining new book, Last In The Tin Bath, this national treasure — universally known as Bumble — talks about life... and the game he loves with a passion.

David Lloyd looks on from the Old Trafford pitch in June and the Sportsmail columnist has written an autobiography titled 'Last In The Tin Bath' which is out on Thursday

Friday night was bath night at 134 Water Street, Accrington, in the 1950s. The appearance of the tin bath full of suds in our back parlour was a regimented affair and had an established pecking order.

This was not just my night to scrub up, it belonged to the whole family, so I had to wait my turn. The cost of producing hot water restricted us to one soak a week and it was adults first. And I don’t just mean me and my parents. Oh, no. My Uncle Harry and Auntie Annie lived five blocks up with my cousins Brian and Jean. That meant I got knocked down a rung or two.

My dad, David senior, and Harry, his brother-in-law, worked at the foundry. They would come home filthy before their big plunge. Uncle Harry would have his turn before muggins here dipped a toe. Not that I could see my toe. You can imagine the colour of the water when it came to my turn and the reduction in its temperature since it had been filled. You will have heard the phrase ‘happy as a pig in s***’. Well, I conformed to the stereotype, without the contentment.

A young Lloyd, wearing a football kit, stands with his father, also called David, during his early years

Ours was a strict household dominated by my mother. To say I was well disciplined by her would be like saying Genghis Khan liked a spot of fisticuffs. She had Genghis’s aggression too. She’d think nothing of giving me a whack with the frying pan. I could get a hiding for next to nothing.

All it took was for her to be that way inclined and woe betide me. On reflection, she must have suffered a few women’s problems because I always seemed to be going to the corner shop to fetch some pills. When she wasn’t in the striking mood I could be stood in the corner of the room for hours on end; told to face the wall and not turn around until instructed. People talk of their childhoods being happy. Was mine? Was it hell. I was frightened to death of my mother.

She worked at a weaving mill from 7.30am to 5pm five days a week, and my sense of dread only eased when she was sat at a loom rather than at our kitchen table.

It was not until I was about 18 that the fear she might actually skin me alive passed.

Lloyd (centre) was dressed as a girl by his mother (right) for the first five years of his life. Also in the picture with Bumble is his Auntie Olwen

I knew my place — move from it and I’d be dispatched to Uncle Harry’s gaff, to fetch his dreaded sailor’s belt. It seemed to spend as much time on my backside as it did around his waist, and it was always Mum who thrust it there with a flick of the wrist reminiscent of Glenn McGrath propelling a seam-proud delivery down an off-stump line.

She administered these lashes with the dedication of an Olympian. Then, when she had finished this ceremonial beating, I suffered the ignominy of having to shuffle back to Harry’s to return his leather weapon of justice.

Talk about a bum deal.

Mum also took it upon herself to kit me out in what I can only say was the wrong gear from an early age. I don’t have anything against cross dressing per se, I just don’t feel it has ever been a pursuit for me. Mum had different ideas.

Disappointed not to get the daughter she had craved, Mum refused to let the facts get in the way of her fairytale. So for the first five years of my life, I was her little girl. If things had turned out as she had planned, I would have been called Gwyneth. As it was she had to make do with putting waves through the long curly hair she let drop to my shoulders, dressing me in a frock and adding accessories. Forget toy cars. The only thing I possessed with wheels on was a pram.

With the accuracy of former Australian bowler Glenn McGrath, Bumble was often hit with a belt on his backside by his mother as a form of punishment for stepping out of line

My mother developed one other strange fixation: she was convinced I had a hole in my head that used to let the cold in and was the chief cause of my asthma. She seemed to think I would catch a chill, as the young heroes of Charles Dickens’s novels used to, so took to sending me to school with a flying hat on.

It was for my own good, she used to tell me, and to make matters slightly worse she put me in a pair of clogs with metal soles, and baggy trousers with braces to boot. It’s no fun being dispatched to school looking like Roy Chubby Brown after he’s been on a hot wash.

When we went swimming, the teachers were told that making me wear a swimming cap was compulsory, so concerned was Mum about water getting in around my brain.

When it came to my health, she was always of the belief that there was something wrong with me, although for my part, other than the complex developed from dressing like a Bavarian circus extra with my lederhosen and European footwear, I generally felt fine outside the house.

Bumble states he was often dispatched to school by his mother looking like comedian Roy Chubby Brown

It was only inside that I would start coughing and wheezing. But I put that down to the multitude of birds my father brought home. The tally of canaries and budgerigars he kept throughout my childhood must have hit 50, and it must have been a bit of budgie-fancier’s lung that I developed. My dad used to breed them and one of his early favourites was a budgie called Joey. It used to sit on his head, which meant it was covered in bird s*** most of the time.

In terms of his pate, imagine an albino version of Mikhail Gorbachev and you will have a pretty accurate image. Unlike me, these birds could get away with a bit of lip and Joey was the only being alive who would ever dare tell my mum what to do. ‘Put kettle on, Mary!’ it would chirp.

I wish I could tell you that my adolescent years were all good, clean fun. But I was brought up not to tell lies. If I did, it meant a wallop from Mum.

Sometimes, due to mind- boggling scheduling that would pitch us into a one-day match in Southampton two-thirds of the way through a three-day contest with Glamorgan, our convoys of Lancashire players would arrive after midnight for matches that were due to start in a matter of hours.

Some of these trips would involve multiple stop-offs for food. Particularly when Lancashire spinner Jack Simmons was in transit. Jack was a very old-school cricketer who made provisions to get through a day’s play. He used to tuck a biscuit in his back pocket when we were fielding so he had quick access to some snap during afternoon or evening sessions.

Lloyd (bottom centre) poses for a photograph with his fellow Lancashire team-mates in 1977

It was a similar story for our car expeditions. On one occasion we were heading to Canterbury and he insisted that we stopped at Chorlton for fish and chips. If you don’t know the area, that is a total distance of two and a half miles from the gates at Old Trafford. You would think that would have put the big lad ‘on’ until our arrival, but we had to get through London to get down to Kent and he insisted on stopping at The Seashell on Lisson Grove for a second helping.

Occasionally, we would be given a coach for lengthy trips, as was the case when we got snarled up on the way to Tunbridge Wells one year. We arrived at our designated hotel at 2am, the place was blanketed in total darkness and there was only a night porter remaining on duty.

After a journey like that, it was understandable that a number of the lads were gagging for the toilet. Having disembarked, we were looking to book in with this chap, whose hair had a similar consistency to Shredded Wheat, which suggested he had been aroused from his slumbers.

Lancashire cricketers train in the nets Frank Hayer (left), Lloyd (on floor) and Harry Pillin

Clearly tired and already in a bit of a flap trying to sort out all our rooms, he was asked: ‘Where’s the toilet?’

‘Down the corridor, first on your left,’ he muttered. So, about half a dozen of them toddled off in the pitch black.

Imagine the relief to be confronted with a white wall that was pretty obviously the communal urinal. Only, it wasn’t so obvious and wasn’t a porcelain facility at all.

They had erroneously been dispatched into the dining room. Seems like I wasn’t the only one who struggled with directions. The smell of kippers was in the air next morning as we came down for breakfast. At least that’s what we thought the aroma was until we realised the back wall was soaking wet.

It's a presumption that the Sky Sports commentary team hangs out socially after hours. That is not the case. There are lots of people with lots of opinions in that box, some iconic cricketers who played for England, and as in a dressing-room environment we all have different interests and different people we click with.

Ian Botham and David Gower like fine dining, fine wines; Mikey Holding is devoted to his computer and horse racing; Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain and myself tend to be beer-and-curry men.

Ian Ward is great company and has a permanent thirst. Some things we do religiously, such as the grand slam of naan in Nottingham. We tend to let off more gas at a Trent Bridge Test than anywhere else!

Today, Bumble is a key pundit on Sky Sports' cricket coverage which includes Nasser Hussain (left), Michael Holding (top left), David Gower (top middle), Michael Atherton (second right) and Sir Ian Botham (right)

On occasions, Atherton does go off piste to join the pompous dining club, attending restaurants that serve things called jus and foam.

It takes all sorts of different characters to make a team, and Shane Warne and Hussain make quite a contrast. Warnie can be very dramatic early in a morning, regularly warning the producer that he has not had enough sleep. Goodness knows what he has been up to.

Sometimes Nasser will tell us he has seen enough of us during the day and will stay in his hotel room on his tod. Who do you think the winner is there?

Shane Warne (right) was part of Sky's Ashes coverage this summer and shares a discussion with Australia's captain for the series, Michael Clarke during a Test match at Edgbaston

When he does come out, it can often lead to disaster. On one night out in Hampstead, first his car wouldn’t start and had to be trailered back to Essex. Then the hotel lost his luggage, so he had to come out in his work gear.

Finally, the boss promptly spilled Sauvignon Blanc over him. Not sure Nasser saw the funny side.

It was difficult to shake the feeling that I was keeping Geoffrey Boycott’s place warm, but England’s 1974 Test against India at Edgbaston was on the flattest pitch I’d experienced in my life.

I could not have wished for a better surface on which to play my second Test and stake a claim for a place in the touring party destined for Australia.

There was nothing to strike fear into me despite India possessing a trio of slow bowlers in Prasanna, Bedi and Venkat, each of whom would take in excess of 150 Test wickets.

Never before had I scored a double hundred and it was a real sense of achievement while playing for my country. Not that there were any over-the-top celebrations. No French kissing of the badge, beating of the chest or pumping of the fists. I simply took off my cap and held it aloft along with my SS bat to acknowledge the crowd.

Pre-season training for Lancashire County cricketers at Old Trafford in Manchester, April 1973. The 'couples' are David Lloyd and Farokh Engineer (right), Peter Lever and Frank Hayes (centre) and Ken Shuttleworth with an unknown 'partner' in the background

I have no memory of feeling fatigued despite having batted all day. I was in the zone.

Farokh Engineer, a great colleague at Lancashire and a true gent, kept whispering over my shoulder: ‘Keep going Bumble, you’re in for a big one.’ Do not think for one minute that this was a little soft for international sport. Had I made the mistake of lurching out of my crease at any point, those bails would have been off in a flash. Farokh played hard but fair and there is a lot to learn from that attitude.

Edgbaston had never witnessed a 200 by an England batsman before, but not everyone in attendance was impressed because as I was calmly taking in the magnitude of the moment a voice from the stands demanded: ‘Here, Lloyd. How much f*****g longer?’ I seemed to be a magnet for chaps like this — the one-line wits — and it always put things into context.

Sport is a pastime, a bit of fun.

The two big wickets of my career were Geoffrey Boycott — which I remind him of most times I see him — and Garry Sobers. You always remember reeling in the big fish.

The first was in the second innings of a drawn Roses contest at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, in August 1967. Boycott, who had 54 to his name, was caught at first slip, which was not particularly unusual.

Lloyd never misses an opportunity to remind Geoffrey Boycott of the time he once claimed his wicket

Or at least it wasn’t unusual until you considered that at no stage during the process of the catch being claimed, and Boycs walking off, did Geoff Pullar touch the ball with his hands. Sizing up a rank bad ball, the bespectacled one went to cut it and somehow got a top edge.

Pullar, quite an ample bloke, instinctively turned his back on it during a course of evasive action and somehow the ball lodged between his a*** cheeks. ‘I’m not going for that,’ Boycott declared, doing his best WG Grace impression as Pullar produced the missing ball from between his legs.

Sadly, he had to!

Of all the blows I took in the middle, never was I in as much discomfort as that day in the second Test at the WACA in Perth in 1974 when my genitals were returned to me after being found on the other side of what the manufacturers claimed was a protective box.

Let’s run through some facts here: the litesome in question was pink and plastic when I needed something more befitting the steel armour worn by combatants in Game of Thrones.

I might as well not have been sporting anything between my legs, for the good this ‘protector’ did on impact with the leather sphere hurled at breakneck speed by Jeff Thomson on Australia’s quickest and bounciest pitch.

In agony, Lloyd reacts after being hit by a ball from Jeff Thomson. Colin Cowdrey is the other batsman looking on during a Test match against Australia in Perth during the 1974-75 Ashes

Bumble still hasn't quite recovered from the ball which broke his protective cup during the Test match

Nowadays, batsmen are much better protected around the groin, but this thing turned into a kind of medieval torture implement when it split. It splintered into several shards and rearranged itself around my orchestra stalls. The initial pain struck me as the ball hit the bullseye, a nanosecond before it clamped its plasticky jaws around my tackle. No wonder I sank to my knees and jack-knifed straight on to my head in extreme pain. Just thinking about the moment makes my voice ascend an octave or two.

Thankfully, Bernard Thomas, our physio, was soon on the scene to assess things. Now looking at a chap’s nether regions was not the kind of task he had signed up for, but boy was I glad for his handling of a delicate situation.

There are few things that leave me speechless but that is one of them, and there was nothing I suffered in my career to compare. Mike Selvey, who was brisk rather than rapid, did double me over in a county match at Lord’s.

Concerned he might be fretting over my well-being post-play, I considered the most responsible course of action to be a visit to the Middlesex dressing room to put his mind at rest. ‘Don’t worry, Selve,’ I grinned. ‘Compared to Thommo, you were a pleasure.’

These extracts were taken from Last In The Tin Bath by David Lloyd. The book — from Simon & Schuster — is out on Thursday in all good bookshops.