The best umpire

Taufel played in the Sydney Grade cricket competition for Cammeray Cricket Club as a fast-medium bowler, but was forced to retire due to a back injury. He had no intention of becoming an umpire, but agreeing to go along with a friend to an umpiring course, and he passed the subsequent exam. He began umpiring grade cricket, but progressed rapidly through the ranks and made his first-class debut in 1995, aged just 24. He quickly proved himself to be an excellent decision maker, and stood in his first One Day International (ODI) on January 13 1999 in the match between Australia and Sri Lanka at Sydney. He was just 28 years old; younger than some of the players. After yet more impressive performances he was given the honour of standing in his first test match in December 2000 - the Boxing Day Test between Australia and West Indies at Melbourne. He stood in another test match a year later between Australia and South Africa at Adelaide, during which he was criticised for not intervening when Brett Lee bowled four successive vicious bouncers at tail-end batsmen. Other than this, however, his decision making was excellent, and he became a member of the Emirates International Panel of ICC Umpires in 2002. He was then chosen to umpire at the 2003 Cricket World Cup, and his performances were sufficiently impressive to earn him a promotion to the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Umpires, the panel from which neutral umpires are chosen for test matches and ODIs.Some people believe that Taufel is the best umpire in the world, and in August 2006 in the ICC's annual umpire review he was officially ranked second for accuracy (behind Darrell Hair), and top overall. He is highly respected for his decision making ability, and is also highly regarded for his calm and positive on field manner. However, being so accurate for so much of the time does put additional pressure on him to perform, and after some poor decisions in a test match between England and New Zealand at Trent Bridge in 2004 he was branded "Awful Taufel" by the British press.He quickly recovered though, and went on to stand in the final of the 2004 Champions Trophy. He has also been appointed to several high profile India-Pakistan fixtures, in which he has performed excellently, and to the 2005 ICC SuperSeries, where Australia took on a Rest-of-the-World XI. At the 2006 Champions Trophy he umpired a semi-final, but could not umpire the final because Australia had reached the final. In January 2007 he became the youngest umpire to stand in 100 ODIs, and in April 2007 took charge of the World Cup semi-final between New Zealand and Sri Lanka, being ineligible for the final which featured Australia.In late May 2008 Taufel officiated in the 2nd test match at Old Trafford, England vs New Zealand with his good friend Darrel Hair. This was Hair's comeback match after a long break from the game.On 3rd March 2009, Taufel was one of the officials caught in the attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team by terrorists in Lahore, Pakistan. He criticized the Pakistan security lapse for the incident.