LUCKNOW, June 20 -- Kanpur's Sunil Chaturvedi has been the longest serving match official in the history of Uttar Pradesh cricket as he served as match referee in 367 matches in domestic cricket in his 25-year career, spanning from 1999 to 2023. After him, a lull looked eminent as Uttar Pradesh hardly had cricketers to take up technical jobs of the game. Two former Ranji Trophy cricketers Rohit Prakash and Parvinder Singh stepped in and joined as match officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The list of the match officials from Uttar Pradesh, especially match referees, is all set to grow further as a few more former cricketers, including women cricketer Chitra Singh, have taken the exam for match referees recently, and if all goes well, Singh along with Jalaun's Arish Alam and Prashant Gupta of Kanpur, will be the new faces of the BCCI. Alam played 34 matches, including 24 first-class ties for Uttar Pradesh, before quitting in 2015. Gupta played his last match for Uttar Pradesh, a T20 game against Bengal at Indore in 2019. During his career, he scored three centuries and 11 half centuries in 84 matches, including 37 T20 games. The only woman cricketer in the fray for match referee, Chitra, played for Uttar Pradesh women's teams in various formats, including List A, First-Class, and Twenty20. "The match referee's job has now been more lucrative as an official gets Rs 35,000 per day, besides getting all top class luxury of travelling, staying and food, if you come into BCCI's fold," said former match referee Sunil Chauturvedi on Thursday. "One gets to do 60-65 matches every season and it fetches almost Rs 20-25 lakh to an individual. Moreover, you get job security till the age of 62 and above this, one always remains out of the clutches of the state cricket politics," said Chaturvedi, 65, adding, "A match referee looks like a big brother of a match and remains an eye and ear of the BCCI." Besides having two match referees on the BCCI panel, currently, four former cricketers from Uttar Pradesh too have made it to the BCCI grades of umpires for the domestic match. They included Ashwani Mandhani, Tanmany Srivastava, Anurag Rathore, Ankit Tewari and Tahir Abbas. Besides them, four non-cricketers from Uttar Pradesh i.e., Rohit Yadav, Arpit Pandey, Ravi Kaushik and Shahid Saifi have appeared in BCCI's exam to be eligible to officiate in domestic matches. Currently, five from Uttar Pradesh, including SP Singh, Akhilesh Tripathi, Ranji Tewari, AP Singh, Vikash Pandrey and Prashant Chaturvedi are official scorers on BCCI's panel. Chief of the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association's umpires committee, Manoj Pundir, who has been quite supportive to former cricketers of Uttar Pradesh to take up the jobs of match officials, said that in coming days many more ex-cricketers will be aiming to become match officials like match referees, scorers and umpires too. "The UPCA has consistently been supporting ex-cricketers in this direction and even in the state panel we have proposed many plans for the development of match officials. We have proposed equal opportunities for all districts across five zones of Uttar Pradesh to discover talent. We want to conduct umpires and scorers workshops in these zones, with modalities and district divisions to be discussed. Also UPCA will exclusively appoint educators to promote and educate the umpires in the state," said Pundir on Thursday. He also said that soon match officials, including umpires and scorers will have a certain dress code and identity cards. "This aims to promote uniformity and identity among officials of UPCA," said Pundir, adding, "We also have plans to re-implement the grading system in 2026-27 season besides promoting women umpires and scorers." "Action will also be taken against inactive umpires and scorers and we have also promised to conduct state panel umpires and scorers examinations once every two years. The committee also proposed to conduct a workshop every year for qualified scorers and umpires of UPCA's state panel." He also said that the umpires and scorers committee has also proposed a hike in remuneration to match officials. "A hike between Rs 200 to Rs 500 in daily fee has been proposed for different categories. Hikes have also been recommended in other categories, and if approved, the qualified umpires/scorers who work as liaison officers in the board trophy or international matches and IPL will receive the same honorarium as approved for qualified umpires and scorers," he added....