The support cast for IPL

After the players, it's time for match officials to get ready for the IPL. The Indian board has suggested a list of 35 umpires that Srinivas Venkataraghavan, the BCCI's director of umpiring, pruned to 20. It will be further cut down to 16.

"The six Indian umpires likely to be seen in on-field action in the IPL are AM Saheba, SL Shastri, GA Pratapkumar, K Hariharan, AV Jayaprakash and I Sivaram," an umpire, who has been shortlisted, told Cricinfo. The first three are currently on the ICC's international panel of umpires, while the other three were part of the panel previously. The rest will officiate as third and fourth umpires.

The 35 umpires are : SK Tarapore, K Hariharan, AV Jayprakash, SN Bandekar, SD Ranade, AY Gokhale, CR Mohite, R Radhakrishanan, Sudhir Asnani, MSS Ranawat, Ravi Subramaniam, I Sivaram, VN Kulkarni, Sanjeev Rao, HS Sekhon, KG Laxminarayanan, Suhas Phadkar, SK Sharma, P Bhanuprakash, PS Godbole, MS Mahal, K Murali, RY Deshmukh, S Dendapani, A Bhattacharjee, S Laxmanan, Balwant Sharma, Sanjeev Dua, SM Raju, MG Mandale, Rajiv Risodkar, Anil Chaudhary, VD Nerurkar, Nandan, NRS Prabhu, RM Deshpande and MS Pathak.