Top T&T um­pire Joel Wil­son said he is both ho­n­oured and hum­bled to be cho­sen by world crick­et's gov­ern­ing body to of­fi­ci­ate at the up­com­ing ICC World Cup to be joint­ly staged by Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

Wil­son, 48, will be­come the first T&T um­pire to par­tic­i­pate in an ICC World Cup when he joins the elite group of of­fi­cials for the com­pe­ti­tion and his his­toric ac­com­plish­ment has not gone un­no­ticed by the T&T Um­pires and Scor­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion.

On Wednes­day the or­gan­i­sa­tion staged a cock­tail re­cep­tion at the hos­pi­tal­i­ty suite in the Queen's Park Oval for all match of­fi­cials par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cur­rent Nagi­co Su­per50 re­gion­al one-day 50-overs tour­na­ment be­ing staged in T&T.

Wil­son said that over the past few weeks he has been prepar­ing for the big as­sign­ment by par­tic­i­pat­ing in a se­ries of ICC or­ga­nized pre-tour­na­ment ex­er­cis­es in­clud­ing a train­ing reg­i­men de­signed to fine-tune the skills of the um­pires picked for the World Cup.

He said he has been tak­ing part in a spe­cial­ist "Eye-Gym" pro­gramme and oth­er ex­er­cis­es to im­prove his re­flex time, brush­ing up on his knowl­edge of the laws and reg­u­la­tions of the game, as well as fa­mil­iar­iz­ing him­self with the Hot-spot and Snicko tech­nol­o­gy.

An­oth­er im­por­tant area that Wil­son is de­vot­ing a lot of time to is the De­ci­sion Re­view Sys­tem (DRS), which will be used at the World Cup which he could be called up­on to ad­ju­di­cate in two match­es when he sits as the third um­pire.

Wil­son said that he leaves T&T on Feb­ru­ary 2 for Mel­bourne where he will be based for three match­es as the fourth um­pire when Aus­tralia plays Eng­land in the open­ing match on Feb­ru­ary 14; the South Africa vs In­dia clash on Feb­ru­ary 22; and for Sri Lan­ka vs Bangladesh on Feb­ru­ary 26.

Wil­son says a very good per­for­mance in these match­es will place him in con­tention for a spot in the quar­ter-fi­nals, one of which will be played in Mel­bourne, the venue for the cham­pi­onship fi­nal on March 29.

When he lands Down Un­der in the first week in Feb­ru­ary, Wil­son said that he will be re­quired to at­tend an ICC work­shop on the 5th and 6th and will al­so par­tic­i­pate in a camp which starts on the 9th.

"My in­ten­tion is to do my best and try and learn all I can from the very knowl­edge­able bunch of of­fi­cials I will be among at the World Cup," said Wil­son. "It will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take ad­van­tage of the great op­por­tu­ni­ty I am be­ing giv­en. I can ad­vance my ca­reer," he said.