Mary Waldron makes history as an umpire for Ireland

Though she only officially retired from playing in 2018, she began umpiring in 2015 and has progressed her umpiring career in parallel to her playing career since this time. Her determination took her to Australia to train as an umpire during the Irish off-season.

Her hard work paid off as she has been appointed to the International Cricket Council’s Development Panel of Umpires. This prestigious status makes her one of only eight women around the world to be appointed. This appointment can certainly be seen as a stepping stone to earn a place in the Elite Panel of ICC Umpires. She is the first Irish woman to achieve this status.

In 2018, Mary was appointed to the First-class Panel of Umpires in Ireland. She also became the first woman to umpire a Men’s List A match in Ireland last summer as she officiated the match between Ireland Wolves v Bangladesh A.

On her inclusion in the Development Panel, Mary said, “I am delighted to be appointed to the ICC Panel. To be honest, I fell into umpiring almost by accident five or so years ago when working as a Community Development Officer at Malahide Cricket Club, but have developed a love for it since. I have spent a number of Irish winters heading out to play club cricket in Australia, and in 2015 I sought out an umpire training course with Cricket Tasmania and it went from there. I can’t thank Roy Loh and Cricket Tasmania enough for the help they gave me starting out, and now SACA and Cricket Leinster for the continued support and opportunity to umpire at higher levels.”

“Since that time I have umpired a season in Tasmania, three seasons in South Australia and back here at home in Dublin I’ve stood for three seasons. I have well and truly lost track of the number of games I’ve umpired, but it is somewhere between 100 and 150 at this stage. While I have enjoyed umpiring in many grounds along the way, probably the day I umpired at Adelaide Oval would be the most memorable to date.”

Earlier this year, Mary was one of the two umpires who became the first woman umpire pairing to umpire a Men’s First Grade Premier Cricket match in Australia.

She also spoke about the other umpires who inspired her to opt this career. Talking about them she said, "While Richard Kettleborough is possibly my favourite umpire, having the opportunity to be umpired by the likes of Claire Polosak and Sue Redfern at ICC events makes umpiring at a high level and genuine goal for me. Seeing them out there shows anything is possible.”

“And I have to mention Joy Neville – she may be a referee in a different sport but I cannot praise her highly enough she just takes everything in her stride. She shows that at the end of the day we are just doing a job and it doesn’t matter our gender - and she’s Irish!”

She further added, "I don’t have a ‘bucket list’ as such, but I went to the World T20 finals in Eden Gardens, Kolkata in 2016. Obviously I’d like to play in a World Cup final there, but the atmosphere was electric and I did think at the time I’d like to umpire there one day. Oh, and a umpiring in a Test match - though again I’d rather play in one first!".