Nitin Menon gets retained by the ICC in their Elite Panel

Indian umpire Nitin Menon retains his status as a member of the ICC Elite Panel and is set to officiate as a neutral umpire for the first time in Sri Lanka later in the month. He is also the only Indian in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) 11-member Elite Panel of Umpires, as he gets a one-year extension from the council.

Menon first made it to the Elite Panel in 2020, becoming only the third Indian umpire after S Venkataraghavan and S Ravi to be on the list. However, due to Covid-19 restrictions imposed by the ICC, he had not got the opportunity to officiate outside India for an international game. But the ICC has uplifted the travel restrictions again, allowing local umpires to travel abroad.

There is no change in the ICC Elite Panel

“The ICC recently gave a one-year extension to Menon who has been our leading umpire over the last three to four years. You will also see him making his debut as a neutral umpire later this month,” a BCCI official was quoted as saying by India Today. Menon will leave for the two-match Test series between Sri Lanka and Australia, to be played between June 29 and July 12, after the conclusion of the ongoing T20I series between India and South Africa.

Menon, after making his international debut on January 26, 2017 in a T20I match between India and England at Kanpur, has stood in 11 Test matches, 30 ODIs, 27 T20Is and 10 WT20Is, and has also been a TV umpire in 22 international matches across formats. 

BCCI decides on who to pick for the ICC International Panel of Umpires, and the Indian umpires in the lower tier are Anil Chaudhary, Virender Sharma, J Madanagopal, and K N Ananthapadmanabhan.

All the previous members of the Elite Panel have been retained, and besides Menon, the other members are Chris Gaffaney from New Zealand, Marais Erasmus from South Africa, Richard Illingworth, Richard Kettleborough, and Michael Gough from England, Joel Wilson from West Indies, Paul Reiffel and Rod Tucker from Australia, Kumara Dharmasena from Sri Lanka, and Aleem Dar from Pakistan.