Mumbai, Sept. 8: The cricket board revamped its panel of international umpires and brought in three new faces to do duty in ODIs at home, BCCI joint secretary M.P. Pandove announced here on Friday.

Amish M. Saheba of Gujarat, Suresh Shastri of Mumbai and G.A. Pratap Kumar of Andhra will replace K. Hariharan, I. Sivaram and A.V. Jayaprakash in the panel with immediate effect.

While Saheba and Shastri will perform on-field duties, Pratap Kumar will be the TV umpire, Pandove said after a meeting of the umpire sub-committee chaired by BCCI vice-president Lalit Modi. The appointments were made for three years. The decision to reconstitute the entire panel was taken largely because the existing members could not graduate to the ICC’s Elite Umpires’ Panel.

ICC reviews the performance of all international umpires before deciding on their promotion to the elite umpires’ list. Every July-August ICC invites nominations from every Board. The full members can nominate three umpires and they can be re-nominated or withdrawn.

India has only Javagal Srinath, as a part time match referee, in the ICC’s list of elite umpires and match referees.

BCCI also appointed ex-captain and former ICC elite panel umpire S. Venkataraghvan as the director of umpires.

The former spinner will give a roadmap within 10 days on how to improve the standard of umpiring in the country, Pandove said.

In what would be a novel way to assess the performance of umpires along with the reports of captains and match referees, all domestic matches from the U-19 level upwards would be video recorded.

"The video recording along with the reports given by the captain and match referee would be considered to assess the performance of umpires," he said.

Venkataraghvan has recommended appointment of retired umpires — both Indian and foreigners — to conduct refresher courses for the umpires twice a year.

He has also recommended appointment of coach from each zone who would assess the umpires on a daily basis. The appointments would be done in the next 10 to 15 days. 20 to 30 umpires will be given contracts from next year after assessment.