No Indian in ICC panel of umpires for 2012-13 season

Dubai: No Indian features in the International Cricket Council`s umpires` panel for the 2012-13 season in which England`s Nigel Llong was on Monday named as the replacement for the recently-retired Billy Doctrove.

Meanwhile, Australian Bruce Oxenford was named in 13-umpire team for the September Twenty20 World Championships in Sri Lanka. Llong replaces Doctrove who announced his retirement from the elite panel last week. Llong has already umpired in 12 Tests, 55 ODIs and 16 T20Is. He was appointed to the ICC Emirates Panel of International Umpires in 2002. The 43-year-old made his international umpiring debut in the second-ever T20I, played between England and Australia at Southampton on 13 June 2005. The following summer in a match between England and Sri Lanka at Lord`s, Llong stood in his first ODI. His first Test was two years later in Dunedin in the match between New Zealand and Bangladesh, the ICC said in a statement. During his playing days as a left-handed batsman and an off-spinner for Kent from 1990-1998, Llong played in 68 first-class matches in which he scored 3,024 runs and took 35 wickets. Meanwhile, the 12 Elite Panelists --Billy Bowden, Aleem Dar, Steve Davis, Kumar Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus, Ian Gould, Tony Hill, Richard Kettleborough, Nigel Llong, Asad Rauf, Simon Taufel and Rod Tucker --will be joined for the ICC World Twenty20 Sri Lanka by Oxenford. The 52-year-old Oxenford has so far officiated in eight Tests, 34 ODIs and 11 T20Is. He was one of the six umpires who had been named to stand alongside the elite panelists in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 after being identified as an emerging and talented match official. The match referees for the event will be Ranjan Madugalle and Jeff Crowe, while Graeme La Brooy will be the match referee to the women`s part of the event. The committee, which finalised the umpires` panels for the 2012-13 season and the World Twenty20 consisted of David Richardson (ICC General Manager -Cricket), Ranjan Madugalle (ICC Chief Match Referee), David Lloyd (former player, coach, umpire and now television commentator) and S Venkataraghavan (former elite panel umpire). PTI