Rudi Koertzen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rudolf Eric Koertzen (born: March 26, 1949, Knysna, Cape Province) otherwise known as Rudi Koertzen is an international cricket umpire.
A cricket enthusiast since his youth, Koertzen played league cricket and became an umpire in 1981. His "slow death" style of indicating that a batsman is out makes him at once recognisable anywhere in the cricket world.
He officiated his first One-day International match of South Africa v India at Port Elizabeth, 9th December 1992 and his first match as an umpire in a Test match came in the South Africa vs India series in in Port Elizabeth, 26-29th December 1992, which was also the first series to see the use of television replays for assisting umpiring decisions.
He became a full-time ICC umpire in 1997, and was one of the original members of the Emirates ICC Elite umpire panel when it was founded in 2002. He is one of just three umpires from the original elite panel who have maintained their place (the others being Steve Bucknor and Daryl Harper). He has officiated more ODIs than anyone except David Shepherd, and recently became the second man to stand in 150 ODIs. His professionalism has seen him through some controversial moments, especially in relation to being approached by people wishing to fix the results of matches in 1999. He is also highly regarded by the players; in 2005 he was overall ranked the 3rd best umpire in the world (behind Simon Taufel, 1st, and Aleem Dar, 2nd), and was ranked top by the Australian cricket team. Koertzen was chosen to umpire the final of the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy with Simon Taufel at the other end, and was also selected to officiate the 6 day Super-Test between Australia and the World XI in October 2005, again with Taufel. His goal is to officiate 100 Test matches and 200 ODIs before he retires.
[edit] External links
- Rudi Koertzen Profile on Cricinfo website
 |
This biographical article related to South African cricket is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
