South African umpire Rudi Koertzen, who wrongly gave Kumar Sangakkara
out when he was on the verge of completing a double century against Australia,
has been replaced by Pakistan's Aleem Dar for Sri Lanka's upcoming Test series
against England.
Koertzen, a veteran of 86 Test matches and 182 one-day internationals, gave the
controversial decision during the second Test match between Sri Lanka and
Australia in Hobart recently.
He apologised to Sangakkara for the mistake which prevented
the batsman from reaching a seventh double hundred, while destroying the slim
chance that Sri Lanka had of levelling the series.
Sangakkara scored 192 in the second innings of the crucial
Test, which Sri Lanka lost by 96 runs.
"South Africa umpire Rudi Koertzen has been replaced by
Aleem Dar for the test series against England beginning in Kandy on Saturday,"
Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) spokesman Samantha Algama said.
The home umpires, who will stand in the three-Test series starting
December 1 are Asoka de Silva, T H Wijewardena, Gamini Silva, Gamini Dissanayake,
R D Kottachchi and D Gunawardhana.
Sangakkara, meanwhile, praised Koertzen for his humility in
apologising for the decision.
"International umpires are not required to come and apologise
when they make a mistake. I thought it was a nice gesture on Rudi's part to
come and have a chat and we moved on," Sangakkara told the Island Newspaper.
"I thought Rudi had an excellent game and he's a very
good umpire. He's been one of the top three umpires over the last two years
and as a team we respect him a lot and have a good rapport with him," he
said.
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