ICC announces tournament officials for the World Twenty-20

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced a team of 14 officials for the upcoming Women's World Twenty-20. The tournament will be held between the 9th and 24th of November, in the Caribbean. It features 10 teams and with the hosts' looking to defend the title on home soil.



Richie Richardson, part of the Emirates ICC Elite Panel of Match Referees and Graeme La Brooy of the Emirates ICC International Panel of Match Referees have been named as the match referees. The revealed names also include eight umpires from the Emirates ICC International Panel of Umpires and four from the ICC Development Panel of Umpires.



Of the 12 umpires, four are female; Kim Cotton, Sue Redfern, Claire Polosak and Jacqueline Williams. The rest are of them are males. They are the following;  Ahsan Raza, Gregory Brathwaite, Shaun George, Wayne Knights, Nitin Menon, Sam Nogajski, Langton Rusere and Sharfuddoula Ibne Shahid.



Majority of the tournament will take place in the cities of Guyana and St. Lucia. The playing control team in Guyana will be headed by Richardson, with Brathwaite, George, Knights, Polosak, Redfern and Rusere umpiring under him. Which means, La Brooy will be the referee of the matches held in St. Lucia, while the umpires for those matches will be Raza, Cotton, Menon, Nogajski and Sharfuddoula. Umpire Williams will officiate at both venues.



The female umpires are all distinguished ones. Cotton debuted as an on-field umpire last season. This was during West Indies tour of New Zealand. She also umpired in the ICC Women’s World Twenty-20 regional qualifier 2018 in Fiji.



Redfern has a unique feather in her cap. That is, she has both played and umpired in the ICC Women's World Cup. She represented England in the 1997 edition of the tournament and 20 years later, in 2017, she was an umpire.



Similar to Redfern, both Polosak and Williams also umpired in the ICC Women's World Cup in 2017. Polosak has stood as an on-field umpire in men's domestic fixtures in Australia, while Williams has the distinction of being the first female umpire to stand in domestic cricket in the West Indies.