Richard Kettleborough will surpass his original umpiring mentor the late David Shepherd’s record of 92 on-field Test by an England umpire in Grenada this week.<\/p>\n
Richard Kettleborough will become England\u2019s most capped on-field Test umpire when he stands in the second Test between West Indies and Australia in Grenada.<\/p>\n
Sheffield-born Kettleborough, whose Test career began in Galle 15 years ago, will umpire his 93rd on-field Test and in doing so overtake his original mentor David Shepherd.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big honour,\u201d Kettleborough told ecb.co.uk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly never imagined it would happen, but I\u2019m very proud of my achievements. To overtake the late, great David Shepherd \u2013 who was one of my idols growing up \u2013 is something I\u2019m very proud of.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually stood with \u2018Shep\u2019 in a County Championship game in 2005 at Scarborough. That was a great experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d only been on the list for three years, but when I first started with the ECB in 2002, I was very lucky to have a lot of help from guys like David Shepherd, John Hampshire, Mervyn Kitchen, Peter Willey and Neil Mallender.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll those guys were a great help to me, and continued to be so in the years that followed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only three men \u2013 Aleem Dar, Rudi Koertzen, and Steve Bucknor \u2013 have reached a century of on-field Test matches and Kettleborough is within touching distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always seen Test cricket as the pinnacle of the game – so getting to 100 on-field Test matches would be the ultimate achievement,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The 52-year-old has a first-class century to his name during a playing career at Yorkshire and Middlesex before he moved into umpiring. He was the youngest member of the ICC\u2019s Elite Panel when he was first appointed to it in 2011 and won the ICC\u2019s Umpire of the Year award two years later.<\/p>\n
Kettleborough revealed he retains the same principals as when he started umpiring 25 years ago \u2013 with a string of Yorkshire Second XI and Academy matches \u2013 as the keys to his longevity and success.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of umpiring is about rhythm and routines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery game we do \u2013 every session of play, whether it\u2019s a County Championship match or a Test match \u2013 is a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never quite know what\u2019s going to happen, either on the field or with the pitch conditions or the weather, so you\u2019ve got to be on your toes the whole time. The concentration levels have to be there, day in, day out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cBefore a Test match, I always spend 30 minutes to an hour standing in the nets, just to get used to the surroundings, maybe the pitch conditions, the heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also a chance to watch any new bowlers you haven\u2019t seen before, to introduce yourself and to start building a relationship with the players. That stuff really matters.”<\/p>\n
His approach has certainly paid dividends.<\/p>\n
Kettleborough\u2019s Test career started in Galle in November 2010, overseeing a fixture made famous by Chris Gayle\u2019s 333.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just remember thinking, \u2018Nobody can ever take this away from me now. I\u2019m a Test match umpire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Since then, he\u2019s been involved in 11 World Cup finals and is now recognised as one of the sport\u2019s finest ever officials.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe most pressure I\u2019ve ever felt as an umpire was the pressure I put on myself to perform, to be consistent, and to be solid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShep always told me \u2018If you can look yourself in the mirror at the end of a day\u2019s play and say you gave honest decisions based on what you saw, then you should sleep well\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I can honestly say I\u2019ve done that every single day of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Kettleborough will surpass his original umpiring mentor the late David Shepherd’s record of 92 on-field Test by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-233477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114786765911678527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}