Former Australian umpire Simon Taufel has been regarded as one of the best umpires who has officiated in the game of cricket. As an on-field umpire, he witnessed several heated arguments between the players and he had to stop the ugly looking fight involving players.
The veteran umpire was at Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, where he shared his experience with the student. He was talking of his experience of traveling the world as an umpire and getting to know various local languages, something that came in handy when he had to stop altercations or catch players badmouthing one another.
Also Read: Simon Taufel resigns from CA’s head of umpiring
Taufel was sharing stories from the days when he was umpiring at the highest level. He revealed an interesting incident of Wankhede Test between India and England in 2006, where Indian pacer Munaf Patel was involved in a verbal altercation with English batsman Owais Shah. Patel started abusing Shah in Hindi and Taufel mentions that Munaf thought that he would get away thinking Taufel doesn’t know Hindi.
However, Taufel caught Patel and later revealed to the students present in attendance, that he knows bad words in at least seven languages. “What did Munaf say?” asked a student and Taufel replied, “Maybe a few bad words.” The students prodded Taufel further and the former umpire revealed, “Munaf said ‘S**la ch***a’ to Shah,” as quoted by The Times of India (TOI).
Also Read: Owais Shah named MS Dhoni as the best wicketkeeper in the world
“One of the things I learned as a cricket umpire was I got to know good words in local language. Now, I know bad words in seven different languages. It helped me a lot in dealing with on-field incidents. Same applies to your (students’) career. You got to have your foundation strong,” he advised the students.
The veteran umpire called off his umpiring career after the ICC T20 World Cup 2012 in Sri Lanka. Before then, he officiated in 74 Test matches, 104 ODIs, and 34 T20Is from 1999 to 2012. He was named ICC Umpire of the year on five successive years from 2004 to 2008. He was the on-field umpire during the final of ICC World Cup 2011 involving India and Sri Lanka.
