Gave Sachin, Sourav bad decisions but learnt from them, says Taufel
› If for everything umpires show the TV sign, then what is the role of the umpire? What if you go up and see the cameras haven’t got the shot? SIMON TAUFEL, on DRS
KOLKATA: From Shane Warne to Steve Waugh, from soft signals to increased scrutiny, from talking to players at nets to talking to them in different languages --or, at least, counting the number of deliveries --- and Virat Kohli, the conversation with former umpire Simon Taufel spanned a range of topics. Including one involving Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul that was not quite cricket.
Adjudged Umpire of the Year by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for five consecutive years, Taufel, 47, said like Pandya and Rahul he made mistakes --- “whether it be a Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly or Brian Lara, I have got them all wrong; once one country was not happy with my decisions and wanted me suspended,” he said. But the important thing is to learn from them.
“I don’t believe in being overly critical. There is need to invest in training and education because it is as much about the player as it is about the person,” said the Australian, got over by a realty group and who will be a keynote speaker at IIT, Kharagpur.
Taufel said he umpired an ODI in Hobart in 2012 where Kohli scored 133 (86b, 16x4, 2x6) against Sri Lanka “where every shot came from the meat of the bat.” Taufel said what makes the India captain stand out is that “he has found out what it takes to be the best Virat Kohli he can be.” Being inspired by Tendulkar and growing as a player under MS Dhoni shaped Kohli but as captain, Virat is now his own man, he said.
Asked who was the most difficult player to manage, Taufel said: “Shane Warne could be very intimidating in the way he appealed. But if you remembered that it is about the bat and the ball and never about the player, you will deal with this.”
COMMUNICATION KEY
To do that he would often speak to players in the nets, said Taufel. He said being an umpire at a time when Australia had once-in-a-generation teams under Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke helped him grow because “you learnt from such high-performers.”
Once, Taufel said, he also spoke to Harbhajan Singh before an IPL game because he was an influence on the field and not doing things “aaram se” (being relaxed). “Good umpiring is all about solving problems before they happen.”
Technology helps umpires solve some problems but Taufel said it is important to realise that it is there to ‘support’ not ‘replace’ umpires. That is why he batted for ‘soft signals’.
“If for everything umpires show the TV sign, then what is the role of the umpire? What if you go up and see the cameras haven’t got the shot?”
Taufel said now umpires need to be ready with seven-eight sets of regulations and maybe three colours of balls in one year of cricket. “But for me, the fundamentals would be the same: reading the playing conditions, finding out whether I need to say ‘ek, do, teen..chai (in Hindi) or “ek, dui, teen…choye (Bangla), checking my hydration and finding out which players I haven’t seen.”
Most of Taufel’s answers ended with “does that make sense?” Every time he said that it sounded like a rhetorical question.