'Dancing' umpire David Shepherd will take charge of his final international match on Tuesday when England host Australia in the decider of their three-match one-day international series at The Oval.
The 64-year-old, a highly popular and respected figure, has officiated in 92 Tests, the first in 1985 and the last between West Indies and Pakistan in Jamaica last month. Tuesday will be his 172nd one-dayer.
The portly, ruddy-faced Shepherd, a former county batsman with Gloucestershire who made a century on his first-class debut in 1965, was selected to stand in the last three World Cup finals in 1996, 1999 and 2003.
Among cricket watchers, he is almost as well known for his dance whenever the score reaches 111 or any multiple of that score.
Cricketing folklore suggests 111, known as the Nelson after British Admiral Horatio Nelson, is an unlucky number often prompting the fall of a wicket. Shepherd, a superstitious man, tries to compensate by hopping up and down on one leg until the score has moved on.
The name was coined in the mistaken belief that Nelson had one eye, one arm and one leg. In fact he had two legs but the superstition has stuck.
The low point of Shepherd's 24-year umpiring career came in 2001, when England hosted Pakistan at Old Trafford. Off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq took four wickets in the second innings to win the game for Pakistan and level the series but three of his victims were dismissed with no-balls. Shepherd was so distraught over missing Saqlain's overstepping that he considered quitting the game.
He continued to be held in high esteem, though. The International Cricket Council, were willing to make an exception to their own rule of neutral umpires to allow Shepherd to end his career by umpiring in the first Ashes Test at Lord's next month.
Shepherd, who still lives in the village of Instow in Devon where he was born, turned down the offer, arguing the game was about the players and saying he did not want any fuss made of him.
