The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Tough season ahead: Taufel

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Tough season ahead: Taufel

— FILE PHOTO

Simon Taufel.

Melbourne: Bored with mundane sledging, top ICC Elite Panel umpire Simon Taufel feels the India-Australia series points towards a tough season ahead when the players would be keen to gain every possible advantage against their rivals.

Voted cricket’s best international umpire for the past four years, Taufel said he might come across some volatile situations during the forthcoming India-Pakistan series.

“Yeah, look it is (fiery between India and Pakistan). Fortunately the players themselves handle it reasonably well,” Taufel was quoted as saying in the Australian media.

Media focus

“There’s a lot of a media focus on it as we know but I think coming out the back end of the Australia-India one-day series we have seen that we are in for a tough summer of cricket where there is a lot of competitive players out there who are really striving for whatever advantage they can get,” he said.

However, in the aftermath of Darrel Hair’s suspension, Taufel did not feel the necessity to officiate differently in a match involving teams from the sub-continent. “I think there are different things to expect and different ways of handling things but by and large you try and treat every game exactly the same and you prepare for it exactly the same,” he said.

Bored with sledging

The Australian said he was bored with the repetitive language used by some players and would step in to prevent sledging turning into ugly scenes as it happened between Sreesanth and Andrew Symonds.

“I think once it broaches personal issues and once it sort of supersedes your moral boundaries of what language is tolerable, and also when it sort of gets a bit mundane and boring to the point of just going on all the time.

“I think most umpires will tend to let the players get what they want to say off their chest and, from our perspective, we would rather make it a player versus player issue rather than a player versus umpire issue,” he said. — PTI

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