LONDON, March 12: South Africa’s Rudi Koertzen and Dave Orchard were on the first elite panel of eight umpires named by the International Cricket Council on Tuesday.

All the major cricket powers except Pakistan and New Zealand have at least one member on the panel. England’s Peter Willey turned down an invitation to join it for family reasons.

The list is: Steve Bucknor (West Indies), Asoka de Silva (Sri Lanka), Daryl Harper (Australia), Rudi Koertzen (South Africa), Dave Orchard (South Africa), David Shepherd (England), Russell Tiffin (Zimbabwe), Srinivas Venkataraghavan (India).

Cricket’s ruling body announced the establishment of the elite panel in mid-2001 following a series of umpiring controversies and allegations of match-fixing in the sport.

Two umpires from the panel will stand in all Test matches and there will be one member standing with a home umpire for one-day internationals.

On average, each member of the panel will stand in 12 Test matches and 15 one-dayers annually, a potential on-field workload of 75 days per year.

All Test captains were asked to make nominations from the current panel of 20 international umpires.

The other major factor in choosing the panel was the marks achieved by individual umpires over the past four years, awarded by captains at the end of each Test match.

The first series to be played under the new system will be the triangular one-day tournament in Sharjah starting on April 10 involving Pakistan, Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

This will be followed by the West Indies v India Test series beginning on April 11, the Zimbabwe v Australia series starting on April 13 and Pakistan v New Zealand series starting May 1.

Umpires have agreed two-year contracts with the ICC and will meet for the first time at a Referees and Umpires Workshop near Cape Town from March 21 to 24.

The induction programme will include seminars covering legal and procedural matters relating to cricket discipline, IT training, the psychology of decision-making, a presentation from the ICC Anti-Corruption Unit, and medical, fitness and media training.—Reuters