KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – For­mer West In­dies fast bowler Re­on King head­lines a trio of um­pires from the re­gion who will of­fi­ci­ate in the up­com­ing ICC Un­der-19 Women’s T20 World Cup.

The 49-year-old King, a Guyanese who played 19 Tests and 50 One Day In­ter­na­tion­als for the re­gion­al side will serve as a match ref­er­ee, while Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Can­dace La Bor­de and Maria Ab­bott of St Vin­cent & the Grenadines have been named as um­pires.

They are among 20 of­fi­cials ap­point­ed by the ICC for the tour­na­ment, which will run from Jan­u­ary 18 to Feb­ru­ary 2.

La Bor­de, of­fi­ci­at­ed the semi­fi­nals and fi­nal of the 2023 U19 T20 World Cup, while Ab­bott is the first qual­i­fied Vin­cent­ian fe­male um­pire.

Sean Easey, ICC’s se­nior man­ag­er in charge of um­pires and ref­er­ees, praised the di­ver­si­ty of the ap­point­ed of­fi­cials and ex­pressed con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ties to per­form at a high lev­el.

“Con­grat­u­la­tions to the um­pires and match ref­er­ees who have been se­lect­ed for this event. These in­di­vid­u­als have earned se­lec­tion by per­form­ing well in bi­lat­er­al crick­et. It is a won­der­ful­ly di­verse group, just like the game that they rep­re­sent,” Easey said.

“Sim­i­lar to the play­ers at this event, these of­fi­cials have been iden­ti­fied as hav­ing high po­ten­tial. We are con­fi­dent that they will per­form well and that some will progress to of­fi­ci­ate at the high­er lev­els of the game,” he added.

Um­pires: Ash­lee Gib­bons (Aus­tralia), Shathi­ra Jakir Jessy (Bangladesh), Gay­athri Venu­gopalan (In­dia), Narayanan Janani (In­dia), Aidan Seaver (Ire­land), Nitin Bathi (Nether­lands), Rizwan Akram (Nether­lands), Rahul Ash­er (Oman), Saleema Im­ti­az (Pak­istan), Shiv­ani Mishra (Qatar), Ker­rin Klaaste (South Africa), De­dunu De Sil­va (Sri Lan­ka), Vi­jaya Prakash Mal­lela (USA), Can­dace La Bor­de (West In­dies), Maria Ab­bott (West In­dies), Forster Mu­tizwa (Zim­bab­we).

Match ref­er­ees: David Gilbert (Aus­tralia), Dean Cosker (Eng­land), Trudy An­der­son (New Zealand), Re­on King (West In­dies).

CMC