'Don't worry about it' - Simon Taufel recalls Sachin Tendulkar's reaction after he was wrongly given out in 90s

When we talk about the best umpires that officiated in International cricket, there are few names who have made their mark in our hearts and also our cricket addicted brains. David Shepherd, Aleem Dar, Richard Ketttleborough, Billy Bowden and many more. But if we travel down the memory lane, the umpire who was famous for ‘never getting it wrong’ was Simon Taufel. Simon, with a shy smile on his face, used to give almost all his verdicts right and was most of the time precise.

He was awarded for his astonishing work as he won the best umpire award by ICC for five straight years, 2004-2008. Taufel later after resigning at just 41 years of age, became ICC’s Umpire Performance and Training Manager. But as a human being, we are bound to make some mistakes and the Australian also made a few of them. Recently while speaking to Gaurav Kapur on Podcast 22 yarns, he recollected one of such incidents.

‘I could see that Sachin wasn’t happy’ – Simon Taufel

When in 2007, Sachin Tendulkar was stuck in the 90s nightmare and it was a topic of argument in the whole cricket community. India was touring England and in a Test match at Old Trafford, Tendulkar was on 91 and Taufel gave him out. The ball from Paul Collingwood nipped back and the right-hander shouldered his arms.

“Well, I’m thinking, shouldered arms, so benefit of the doubt probably to the bowler, and I’ve given Sachin out after a bit of thought,” Taufel recalled. “Now, of course, Sachin’s not happy with the decision. It’s unusual for him to stand around, and he did stand there for a little bit of time, and then he went. I could see that he wasn’t happy. ”

The hawkeye showed that the ball was missing the off stump and with Sachin being in the 90s, it added fuel to the fire. Taufel revealed how a friendly chat with the cricketer in the following morning helped them to maintain mutual respect.

“Later on Hawkeye showed that the ball was predicted to miss the off stump by maybe an inch. And I just knew what the response was going to be like from world cricket; so I didn’t open Cricinfo, I didn’t read any newspapers, I knew that I was going to be… not the flavour of the month in the media.”

“The following morning I happened to pass by Sachin on my normal morning walk out to the middle and I come across Sachin and I said, ‘look, yesterday I got it wrong, you know? I’ve looked at it, I got it wrong.’ He said, ‘look, Simon, I know.’ He said, ‘you’re a good umpire, you don’t often get many wrongs, it’s okay, don’t worry about it’,” he concluded.