Koertzen replaced by Dar for Lanka-England series

COLOMBO: 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who wrongly gave Kumar Sangakkara out when he was on the verge of completing a double century against Australia, has been replaced by Pakistan's Aleem Dar for Sri Lanka's upcoming Test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"South Africa umpire Rudi Koertzen has been replaced by Aleem Dar for the test series against England beginning in Kandy on Saturday," Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) spokesman Samantha Algama said.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.