Joseph Pieter Anne Willem Molenaar (born 20 September 1945) is a Dutch

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

umpire whose international career has spanned from the early 1980s through to the early 2010s. Molenaar first umpired an international match in 1983, when he officiated a match between the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

and Irish women's teams at the one-off Centenary Tournament in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

. The following year, he umpired a

women's One Day International Women's One Day International (WODI) is the limited overs form of women's cricket. Matches are scheduled for 50 overs, equivalent to the men's game. The first women's ODIs were played in 1973, as part of the first Women's World Cup which was ...

(ODI) between the Netherlands and

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, which was the Dutch team's first ODI.Willem Molenaar as umpire in women's ODI matches
– CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 August 2015. Molenaar's first major men's tournament was the

1990 ICC Trophy The 1990 ICC Trophy was a limited-overs cricket tournament held in the Netherlands between 4 June and 23 June 1990. It was the fourth ICC Trophy tournament to be staged, and the first to be held outside England. It was also the first ICC Trophy co ...

, which was hosted by the Netherlands. He officiated several group-stage matches and the semi-final between

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and

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

, and returned for the 1994 edition in Kenya. Outside of Hoofdklasse (top-class) league matches, Molenaar regularly umpired matches between Dutch sides and touring international sides throughout the 1990s and 2000s. He made his umpiring debut in

list-A List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

matches during the

1999 NatWest Trophy The 1999 NatWest Trophy was the 19th NatWest Trophy. It was an English limited overs county cricket tournament which was held between 4 May and 29 August 1999. The tournament was won by Gloucestershire who defeated Somerset by 50 runs in the fin ...

season, officiating a game between the Netherlands and

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at the

VRA Ground VRA Cricket Ground is a cricket ground in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, the home of VRA Amsterdam since 1939. It has a capacity of 7000 spectators and regularly plays host to the Netherlands home games in the World Cricket League, Intercontinent ...

Amstelveen Amstelveen () is a municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands with a population of 92.353 as of 2022. It is a suburban part of the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The municipality of Amstelveen consists of the historical villages ...

. Molenaar also umpired games at the 2003 and 2004 editions of the competition (renamed the C&G Trophy), though neither of those games involved the Netherlands.Willem Molenaar as umpire in List A matches
– CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 August 2015. In March 2007, he was appointed to

ICC Europe The European Cricket Council (ECC) is an international body which oversaw cricket in European countries other than the Test-playing cricketing nation of England, the only European Full Member of the ICC for the duration of the ECC's existence. ...

's inaugural European Umpire Panel, as one of five Dutch umpires. In August 2007, after a gap of almost 23 years since his first women's ODI, Molenaar umpired two more matches, during the South African tour of the Netherlands. Later in the month, when Bermuda toured, he was also reserve umpire for two men's ODIs. Molenaar's last women's ODI to date came in July 2008, when the West Indian team toured. In September 2009, when Afghanistan toured, he was the

third umpire The third umpire (or TV Umpire) is an off- field umpire used in some cricket matches, particularly international matches. Their role is to make the final decision in questions referred to them by the two on-field umpires or the players. The thir ...

for one of the men's ODIs. His final list-A match as an umpire (to date) came in July 2010, a one-day match between the Netherlands and a Zimbabwe XI that preceded an Intercontinental Cup fixture. Molenaar's daughter, Marjolijn Molenaar, has played at ODI level for the Netherlands.Marjolijn Molenaar
– CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 August 2015.

References

External links

– CricketArchive

– ESPNcricinfo {{DEFAULTSORT:Molenaar, Willem 1945 births Living people Dutch cricket umpires People from Leiderdorp