‘My error played part in England winning Lord’s classic’
Marais Erasmus admits to ‘massive’ World Cup final blunder as he looks back on his colourful umpiring career
It says a lot for the affection in which Marais Erasmus is held that when a wind-up went around social media that Taylor Swift had dedicated a song to him in front of 100,000 fans at the MCG, quite a few fell for it.
Given Swift’s only brush with cricket was sitting on the sofa on The Graham Norton Show next to Kevin Pietersen and confusing “Test cricket” for “chest cricket”, it would be quite something for her to become friends with a 60-yearold South African umpire and former deputy headteacher who played first-class cricket for Boland.
But Erasmus has that likeable, laughing-policeman air – treading nicely the thin line between firm and autocratic with players – which made some stop for a second and wonder. “A friend of my wife’s brother asked if we knew Taylor. So, we replied ‘yes we do’. Ha ha. It was quite funny. I like her music but never met her.”
Erasmus retired last month after standing in his 82nd Test, ending in Christchurch with New Zealand against Australia. He was in the middle for England’s epic 2019 World Cup final against New Zealand, was third umpire for the second Ashes Test last summer when Lord’s became a bear pit following the stumping of Jonny Bairstow, and was at the heart of the first “timed out” dismissal in international cricket at last year’s World Cup. That is quite an array of controversial matches.
We chat through all of those on Zoom, Erasmus logging on from his home in Hermanus just after a round of golf. After nearly 15 years on the International Cricket Council rota, his love for the game and umpiring is undimmed. “It’s a challenging job but it’s also a very rewarding job. There’s moments where you think, ‘Why am I doing this stuff?’ but there’s so many more positive moments and benefits and I’ve never seen it as work,” he says.
Erasmus ranked New Zealand as the nicest team to umpire – “They were always very, very respectful” – and Ricky Ponting and Mahela Jayawardene as the most challenging players. “They tried to intimidate us. Sometimes it was subtle and sometimes not subtle.”
James Anderson could be argumentative, no surprises there. “Ha ha, thank God Jimmy was never captain, but no, no, Jimmy was hard work. You knew that he was not a character that you should try and sweet talk or whatever. I normally just gave him quite abrupt, short answers. Because if you got into a debate with him, it was going to be never-ending, especially when you spoke to Jimmy about running on the wicket. He would argue it. I just said, ‘You’re on the danger zone, try and get off. If you don’t, I will give you a warning. It is not going to be a debate’.
“Stuart Broad was challenging as well sometimes but he and Jimmy are fiery fast bowlers and that’s the way it should be.”
Erasmus welcomes technology but thinks it is going too far. “It is a little sad. They’ll have to have a human there for player management, but a lot of it is just going to be up to the Hawk-eye boys to make the final decisions,” he says. Erasmus comes from a generation of umpires whose decisions were held up to scrutiny by DRS, so they had to accept mistakes and leave their egos in the hotel. Previously, umpires never had to endure that instant judgment on their performance or would be ignorant about any debate on television if they had made a howler.
A DRS challenge always led to a dry mouth and a cold sweat waiting for it to come up on the big screen to be seen by thousands of fans in the ground, and the players around them on the field.
“Actually, I got frustrated when teams wasted reviews, because then you can’t fix it,” Erasmus says. “You knew your mistakes could impact the game. I suppose that’s old-school umpiring but in the old days they couldn’t prove every minute leg-side little nick and things like that so your decision might not look right even when it was.”
Test cricket was draining, with Erasmus ranking Sri Lanka the hardest place to umpire because of the heat and tricky pitches. “My worst Test ever from a decisionmaking point of view was in Pallekele [Kandy]. England were playing and I made six errors, which was not a great feeling.”
Like players, one bad day in Test cricket is not the end for the umpires. “You have to go back on day two and do it all again,” he says. “Players remember the 50-50 decisions from day to day. Sometimes there’s a little comment. Some teams try to put a bit of pressure on you, so, from that point of view, Test cricket is very tough. It’s much easier to do the white-ball stuff. If you have a bad T20 game, it’s four hours and it’s gone. I can remember every Test but how many T20 games do you recall? Not many.”
One white-ball match that will never be forgotten is the 2019 tied World Cup final. With England requiring nine to win from three balls, Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid went for a second run. Stokes dived for his ground and deflected a throw at the stumps off his bat and down to the boundary for four freakish overthrows. Amid the chaos, England were awarded a six but it later turned out it should have been five because the batsmen had not crossed for the second run.
Erasmus was in the middle with Kumar Dharmasena and, along with third umpire Rod Tucker, agreed it should be six. “The next morning, I opened my hotel room door on my way to breakfast and Kumar opened his door at the same time and he said, ‘Did you see we made a massive error?’ But in the moment, on the field, we just said six, not realising that they haven’t crossed.”
Erasmus regrets more wrongly giving out Ross Taylor lbw earlier in the day. “It was just too high, but they had burnt their review,” he says. “That was my only error in the whole seven weeks and afterwards I was so disappointed. That impacted the game a bit because he was one of their top players.”
Lord’s was a favourite haunt and his final Test there was the most explosive of all. The umpires had no choice but to enforce the laws when Australia stumped Bairstow wandering out of his ground thinking “over” had been called.
“Shortly afterwards, I walked up to the dining room and then Jonny walked in and it was very frosty,” he recalls. “I realised maybe this is not a good place for me to be, so I left. Subsequently, I heard that Jonny apparently said, ‘Are you guys happy with that?’ David Warner said yes, so I can just imagine it was quite messy in there.”
Proof that a clever umpire is one who knows when to make his presence felt, and when to make a smart exit.
‘I normally gave Jimmy quite abrupt, short answers. You knew, if you got into a debate, it would be never-ending’