Australian cricket umpire Simon Taufel says that when on-field sledging becomes personal, he’ll step in to ensure the situation doesn’t escalate. Otherwise, don’t bore him with the same old comments.
Taufel, voted cricket’s best international umpire for the past four years, will officiate in the Pakistan-India series next month.
He told Sydney radio station 2KY on Monday that the series between the traditional rivals is often overhyped — ”fortunately the players themselves handle it reasonably well”.
”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’ve seen that we’re in for a tough summer of cricket,” added Taufel.
”There’s a lot of competitive players out there who are really striving for whatever advantage they can get.”
During Australia’s recent one-day tour of India, there were fiery exchanges between players — particularly involving Shantha Sreesanth of India and Australia’s Andrew Symonds — and later some racist taunts from fans.
Four Indian fans will face court for racist comments and actions directed at Symonds during one match.
”I think once it broaches personal issues and once it sort of supersedes your moral boundaries of what language is tolerable,” Taufel said of his player guidelines.
”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’d rather make it a player versus player issue rather than a player versus umpire issue.”
Taufel said South Africa’s Andre Nel was one sledger who often sticks to a common theme. He heard it first-hand recently when the Proteas toured Pakistan.
”Andre unfortunately only had one line that he was dishing out to Shoaib Malik and the boys so it got a bit monotonous there.” Taufel said. ”We just had a chat to Andre and said to [captain’ Graeme Smith, ‘Look, he’s only traipsing out one line, it’s getting a bit boring’.” — Sapa-AP