Taufel calls for more focus on balance between bat and ball

Few know cricket laws and playing conditions (PCs) better than Simon Taufel. The former umpire, once considered the best in the business, says he does not like some, including the Impact Player rule and strategic breaks. He also advocates the return of the umpire soft signal and believes it would be fair if one bowler were allowed to bowl five overs in T20s when a batter stays for 20 overs, for the balance between bat and ball. Now the head of match officials in the ILT20, Taufel (54) explains his thoughts on the rules of the game and much more in an interview with Cricbuzz. Excerpts:

How has been your association with ILT20?

Look, the league is fascinating. To develop cricket in the UAE is a wonderful project. Great facilities here. You know, when you look at what Dubai has - with the ICC Academy, Sports City, the Dubai International Sports Stadium, plus here in Sharjah, plus Abu Dhabi - it's a growing region. You've only got to look at the Sheikh Zayed Road and at the buildings going up, and the overdevelopment that's occurring. It's a growing region, and cricket's part of that.

And again, if you look at the recent announcement to partner with Saudi Arabia to grow cricket further in the Gulf countries, that's quite exciting. I love getting involved in projects at the ground level. And there is a real need here for officiating intellectual property. There is no one here. Unfortunately, the ECB, the Emirates Cricket Board, don't have an umpires' manager. And there's a real thirst for knowledge here among the umpires and referees to get international experience and support.

I'd like to think that I, and a lot of the experienced umpires and referees that we bring into this environment, help their development. It helps the development of cricket in the UAE. Yeah, it's a real opportunity for me to learn things myself about how to best impart that knowledge, and to be part of, I think, a tournament that has super potential to grow into something more substantial than where it is right now.

So you have managed to keep yourself involved in the game even after retirement.

It does keep me contemporary. So not only do I officiate a match at the start of the tournament, but I get to stand, obviously, with another umpire and hopefully understand how best I can help them from a technical aspect, but also just support one.

And then from a referee's point of view, it keeps me contemporary around playing conditions, around training and development, around supporting umpiring, but also leading from behind. You know, my role here as a referee is to really support the match officials. There's other work that I do for the league around governance.

Since you have retired from international cricket (in 2012), how do you look at the rules and playing conditions changing over the years?

Well, the game's continued to evolve, hasn't it? You know, the proliferation of T20 cricket, more T10 cricket coming in, more limited-overs cricket, perhaps less Test cricket, so much more cricket. You know, one of the big challenges we have here in a league like this is 34 matches, five weeks, tournament fatigue. We need to make sure that our umpires and referees stay fresh.

But yeah, rule changes - you know, the game continues to adapt and evolve. You know, you look at the scoring rates in T20 cricket and the impact it's had on Test scoring rates. We've got two-day Test matches happening this year in Australia.

You know, there's a lot of attacking focus happening in all forms of cricket right now. And the schedules are becoming incredibly tight. Every tournament, every league is looking for something to make it unique. There's a lot of tweaking going on. There's a lot of, dare I say, gimmicking going on. Every tournament wants to try to have something that they can put their own name to. There's a real danger sometimes that if it isn't broke, why are we fixing it? It's very unusual for playing conditions to remain the same for two seasons in a row. It's got to make it more challenging for players. It's challenging for fans and spectators. It's challenging for umpires and referees.

Are you comfortable with those changes?

Not all changes are good. As I said, sometimes things aren't broken. And we go changing things just for the sake of a marketing gimmick, which, you know, we've got to be careful in that space. Because if the fans out there, sitting on their chairs and watching at home on TV, don't understand, it makes it more difficult to follow. For me, playing conditions need to add value to the game.

You know, and we need to create an environment where players and captains can express themselves. You know, I think some of the changes we've made around the switch hit are great. Some of the changes to the boundary law and playing conditions are great. We're seeing more athleticism, we're seeing higher scoring rates - all those sorts of things. But whether it's laws of cricket or playing conditions, I think it's really important to focus on the balance between bat and ball.

Fielding has improved immensely. And the batting has got more ingenious. And the bowlers are having to respond. So I think that's exciting. But we just need to be careful, not to change for the sake of change.

Like, for instance?

Well, look, you know, IPL has the Impact Player.

Even ILT20 has it.

ILT20 has Super Sub. My core cricket tells me that I'd love to see XI on XI. I'd love to see all-rounders, more all-rounders in the game. I'd love to see the strategy of 11 on 11, not changed or impacted because of an impact player who might only bat for two balls and doesn't field. Where is the value in that? So I do like those traditional aspects of the game. Maybe the jury is still out on the real value of those sorts of shifts in playing conditions.

The timeouts - you know, they certainly break the momentum, and they do sort of cause that pregnant pause in the game. Maybe that deserves a bit of a rethink. I think there have been some additions around the stop clock, to speed up play and get fielders in position. But maybe the stop clock should apply to the batting team as well. Maybe the batters need to be in position too. You know, I still think T20 cricket is designed to be a three-hour game.

But in some parts of the world, we see T20 cricket go for four hours plus. We want fast, exciting cricket, and we don't want it to stop. So it seems quite counterintuitive. We want a fast game, but then we have all these stoppages.

You sit on the MCC Cricket Committee. Any changes to the playing conditions you envisage?

Well, so the lawmakers try to keep up with what the players do. The players tend to be inventive and look for loopholes. And as I said before, we're trying to maintain that balance between bat and ball. So the MCC, which I'm lucky enough to sit on their law subcommittee with, we're always focused on how do we maintain that balance between bat and ball? How do we keep up with modern cricket? How do we foresee what's likely to happen? How do we empower umpires to deal with challenges that keep cropping up?

And this year, 2026, we'll see a new edition of the laws come out. There'll be quite a few changes, one of which we've already seen come in with the ICC boundary regulation, which affects catches on the boundary. So it was felt that perhaps fielders should not be able to leave the field and continue to hop and try to maintain a catch.

The ICC approached the MCC and said, look, the cricket committee would like to change that. The MCC then drafted a new law, which has now been adopted into the ICC, but that will become officially law in October 2026. So it's quite a very big responsibility to write playing conditions and laws that are played all around the world, you know, because people play cricket differently.

Any playing condition that you think has outlived its course?

Well, it doesn't matter what I think, what you think is most important. That's why we have a committee. That's why we have a difference of views. That's why it's important to use the collective intelligence of the group.

And when I look at the MCC law subcommittee, it's such a wide variety of a group - you know, we've got people from India, we've got people from Australia, people from England, obviously, and cricket's played in all corners of the globe. So I think it's the diversity that's really important. The collective intelligence, as I said, and it really doesn't matter what I think so much - it just matters, you know, how do we make cricket more accessible.

One of the great things that T20 cricket has done for us is open up the game to women and young girls, by spectating and playing. The growth of the women's game is exponential at present. And you've only got to look at the women's cricket calendar these days.

And I saw a recent announcement that FairBreakers have signed an agreement with Saudi to run another tournament in 2026. And that's great for women's cricket, because not all the associated countries play a lot of international cricket. So we need to keep providing a pathway for players. So we need to keep providing pathways for players.

Having said that, my focus is on match officials. How can we provide resources, information, and support programmes to allow the best umpires and referees to come through to express their talents? And I'm very lucky to have gone through that pathway myself. And I'm focused on how can I make it better for the next generation? How can I make it better for the next generation?

Any changes that you want introduced?

Look, me personally, I've made a couple of suggestions to a couple of different leagues, which are still yet to be given the time of day. But I'd love to see - I'd love to see again - bat and ball be more equalised in limited-overs cricket.

I'd love to see in T20 cricket one bowler bowl a fifth over. You know, if a batter can be out there for the whole innings and score 100 from ball number one, we're limiting all the bowlers to four overs. Can we actually maybe give one bowler one extra over, you know, to try to even up a dominant batter versus a dominant bowler? You know, so those sorts of things. I'd just like to see how we can rebalance the scales a bit.

Your thoughts on DRS? It has been in the news of late.

DRS is not foolproof. It doesn't fix every mistake. And it doesn't give us 100%. You know, players run out of reviews. On average, players get it right 25% of the time. Umpires, on average, get it right 92-93% of the time. What DRS does for us is raise 92-93% to 97-98%.

It doesn't get us to 100. So you feel it is better to be there than not? Sure, but it's always that mix of technology and human beings. You know, if you went the all-technology route, that wouldn't give you 100%. If you went all-human route, that wouldn't give you 100% either. But certainly, it gets us more decisions right - but that comes at a cost. A financial cost, but also a time cost to the game because you've got, you know, technology involved.

One of the great additions to ILT20 this season has been the smart replay feature. We use two specialist umpires here in ILT20. They do seven or eight matches each. That means they get very good at what they're doing, and they're able to do a lot of background checks with smart replay very efficiently, which reduces the number of interruptions to the cricket match. It keeps the focus on the play rather than on the umpires.

Mitchell Starc says the ICC should provide it.

I'd love to see the ICC actually own technology, rather than it being supplied by the broadcasters and paid for by the broadcasters. I think if the ICC was able to look at a way to fund owning the technology and actually be in control - because now we have more, we have more third-party people who are responsible for decision-making, whether that's the technology provider or the broadcaster - and there's no accountability for what they do.

So I think, you know, umpires' decisions are very transparent out there and they own their decisions. I'd certainly like to see the umpires' soft signal come back. I'd like to see umpires provide a starting point for fair catches and obstruction and those sorts of things.

Are you sure you want the soft signal reinstated? Any particular reason?

But technology doesn't always give us the answer we're looking for. So if we miss a camera replay, if it's not clear enough, you know, I'd love the umpires to be saying, 'Well, we believe that's out, we believe it's not out.' That's the starting point. And if technology conclusively shows that the on-field umpire's got it wrong, we change it. Otherwise, we stick with the on-field decision.