Photo Credit: New Zealand Cricket
New Zealand umpire Derek Walker is about to raise his third century in as many months.
The former Otago cricketer will stand 100th first-class match when Otago’s sixth-round Plunket Shield clash with Central Districts gets underway in his hometown of Dunedin.
Walker already clocked an umpiring ton in List A cricket last month to go with his Twenty20 umpiring century in mid-December.
A useful left-handed batsman and right-arm slow-medium pacer, Walker played 40 first-class games for Otago and 31 one-dayers across the 1980s and made his umpiring debut at that level in Christchurch in January 2005, some 17 years after playing his last first-class game.
He was a member of the International Cricket Council’s second-tier International Umpires Panel in 2012 and made his international debut in a Twenty20 International (T20I) in Auckland in February 2013.
Walker went on to stand in a total of eight T20Is and nine One Day Internationals with his last international outing being in February 2016 and has officiated in Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka.
Name of Author: New Zealand Cricket
The New Zealand national cricket team, known as the Black Caps, made their Test debut in 1930 against England in Christchurch, becoming the fifth nation to play Test cricket. After waiting 26 years for their first Test win against the West Indies in 1956, they also played their first ODI in 1972–73 against Pakistan. New Zealand are the inaugural World Test Championship champions (2021) and have won the ICC Champions Trophy (2000). They have reached the Cricket World Cup final twice and the T20 World Cup final once.
