-says English umpire  Richard Kettleworth

An  English umpire who has officiated in this season’s West Indies’ first-class tournament has placed playing standards “somewhere around the bottom end of the second division of the (English) county championship.”

The Sunday Times has reported that Richard Kettleworth, who was on an umpires’ exchange arrangement, was also concerned that “indiscipline remains a major issue.”

Kettleworth, 35, was a left-handed batsman who represented Middlesex and Yorkshire during his playing career between 1994 and 1999. He has stood in matches involving Combined Colleges and Campuses, Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Windward Islands.

Simon Wilde, the newspaper’s correspondent covering England’s current tour of the Caribbean, referred to former captain Brian Lara’s withdrawals from various tours and the well publicised disciplinary troubles of Daren Powell and Keiron Pollard on the recent tour of New Zealand.

“As for Sulieman Benn’s temper … well, don’t even go there,” he added.

He also detailed the incident that led to the Leeward Islands’ dropping of captain Runako Morton, the West Indies batsman for their latest match against Jamaica in Kingston.

“During the Leeward Islands’ match against Combined Colleges and Campuses in Barbados, Morton was given out – possibly wrongly – by a local umpire who was officiating with Kettleworth  and, at the end of the day, barged into the umpires’ room to harrange the official,” Wilde reported.

“Then, next morning, Morton was found fighting with a team-mate, Anthony Martin, in the dressing-room,” he added.

Providing an explanation for their exclusion from the team against Jamaica, team coach John Archibald said: “There was just a little incident during one of the games so we had to take disciplinary action.”