ICC Announces The List Of Umpires And Referees Who Will Officiate In T20 World Cup 2021
The International Cricket Council has announced the full list of umpires and match referees who will oversee the upcoming T20 World Cup. The event, which is happening after the gap of five years, will be hosted in UAE and Oman. The Round 1 stage games would start on October 17th while the Super 12 matches will begin on October 23rd. ICC has announced the list of umpires and referees only until this stage. For the knockouts, the list will be announced later.
A 20-member contingent selected for the T20 World Cup
ICC has gone ahead and selected a group of 20 members as part of the umpiring contingent. In an official statement, the council said, "The selection of a 20-strong group effectively means that, for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, there will be neutral umpires for all matches of the 16-team tournament." Below is the list of Match Referees and the Umpires.
Match Referees: David Boon, Jeff Crowe, Ranjan Madugalle, Javagal Srinath
Umpires: Chris Brown, Aleem Dar, Kumar Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus, Chris Gaffaney, Michael Gough, Adrian Holdstock, Richard Illingworth, Richard Kettleborough, Nitin Menon, Ahsan Raza, Paul Reiffel, Langton Rusere, Rod Tucker, Joel Wilson, Paul Wilson.
The Match Officials for the upcoming ICC Men's #T20WorldCup have been announced.
— ICC (@ICC) October 7, 2021
Details 👇https://t.co/qWQ4mRep5y
Umpiring will play a crucial part in the tournament
T20 has evolved into such a format in which any team can beat any other opponent on a given day. Hence, there is the likelihood of plenty of close encounters. In such a scenario, the umpiring decisions will be crucial. The DRS will also have to be carefully handled by the umpires.
India and England will start as the favourites for the event. However, teams like West Indies and New Zealand are also quite strong and will surely be amongst the teams that can reach the finals. The likes of Afghanistan and Bangladesh would want to create a few upsets.