Australian Female Umpire Claire Polosak Bravely Scolds David Warner Before Making History During SCG Test
Updated - 07 Jan 2021, 12:53 PM
Claire Polosak, on Thursday, created history by becoming the first woman to officiate a men’s Test match when Australia and India took to the field at the Sydney Cricket Ground for the third Test. With international umpires not being able to travel overseas to officiate in Tests, Cricket Australia and the ICC had to include Claire Polosak in the team of the match officials.
Australians Paul Reiffel and Paul Wilson are serving as the on-field umpires at the SCG, while Bruce Oxenford and David Boon have been respectively named as the third umpire and match referee. Claire Polosak, on the other hand, is plying her trade as the fourth umpire. She is responsible for overseeing pitch preparation and repairs, player injuries and replacements, and organising replacement or new balls.
Warning to David Warner:
Only time will tell how Claire Polosak’s career pans out as an umpire in men’s cricket but if former ICC umpire Simon Taufel’s recent comments about her is anything to go by, then one can say she is set to go a long way. One of the finest umpires the game has ever seen, Taufel has revealed how Claire Polosak showed remarkable courage by scolding David Warner and asked him to move off the pitch during the warm-ups.
“She has a tremendous amount of experience at the international level and today we see her debut in the ICC men’s match officials team for the first time. When I spoke to Claire a couple of days about this about opportunity, she was relishing it,” Taufel said on Channel 7.
“I did see early on in the telecast where she had the courage to tell Dave Warner before the match started to get off the pitch and do his shadow batting from behind the rope. That showed a lot of courage and a lot of fortitude for someone in their first experience as a fourth umpire and a Test match,” he added.
Earlier, Polosak also had the privilege of being the first female match official in a men’s List A game in Australia. The 32-year-old will be on standby should anything happen to the on-field or TV umpires in the ongoing Test.
