We characterise the boundedness of the $H^{\infty }$ calculus of a sectorial operator in terms of dilation theorems. We show e. g. that if $-A$ generates a bounded analytic $C_0$ semigroup $\left(T_t\right)$ on a UMD space, then the $H^{\infty }$ calculus of $A$ is bounded if and only if $\left(T_t\right)$ has a dilation to a bounded group on $L^2([0,1],X)$. This generalises a Hilbert space result of C.LeMerdy. If $X$ is an $L^p$ space we can choose another $L^p$ space in place of $L^2([0,1],X)$.