At the end of February Cricket Espana ran an ICC Europe Level One Umpire Course at La Manga resort in Murcia.
The instructor for the course was former ICC Europe Umpire panelist Ron Graham and the weekend course culminated with an exam that will be sent to ICC Europe at Lords for official accreditation.
The nine candidates for this specific course were based in the ECCL and Madrid region. The four candidates from Madrid will help to ease the officiating difficulties experienced last season for the Madrid League games at Sonseca.
David Stirton and Murari Perumalsamy of Madrid Cricket Club and Ittifaq Ahmed and Mohammad Ahmed of Madrid United Cricket Club made the 500 km round trip to attend the course. They were joined by Bobby Nix of Sporting Alfas, Vince O’Reilly of Intellectuals Cricket Club, Dave Riley of Torrevieja, Harmit Phull of the newly formed Pinatar Pirates and Bill Gaynor of La Manga Cricket Club.
Several of the candidates have already been offered the opportunity to officiate in some of the upcoming Academy games and it is hoped this new crop of officials will be putting their new found skills to good use on the cricket field in the near future.