Marais Erasmus interview: My mistake helped England win World Cup

It says a lot for the affection Marais Erasmus is held in 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 previous 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-year-old 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 but not 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 have never met her.”

Erasmus retired last month after standing in his 82nd Test, ending in Christchurch with New Zealand versus 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 found himself in the middle of the first ‘timed-out’ dismissal in international cricket at last year’s World Cup. That’s quite an array of controversial matches.

We chat through all of those on Zoom, Erasmus logging on from his home in Hermanus just back from a round of golf. After nearly 15 years on the ICC rota, he has had his fill of airports and hotel rooms for a while but his love for the game and umpiring is undimmed.

‘Ponting and Jayawardene tried to intimidate us’

“It’s a challenging job but it’s also a very rewarding job,” he says. “There are moments where you think, ‘why am I doing this stuff?’ but there are so many more positive moments and benefits and I’ve never actually seen it as work.”

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.”

Jimmy 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, you know, try to 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 the running on the wicket. He would argue it. I just said, ‘you’re on the danger zone, try to get off. If you don’t I will give you a warning. It is not going to be a debate.’

“I had an incident with Shane Watson in an Ashes Test in Adelaide, where I sort of had a friendly chat to him. ‘You’re running on’ and he said something like, ‘oh, did you warn Jimmy in the first innings?’ I thought, ‘oh, you’re gonna have an attitude. I’m not going to assist you’.

“Because normally we give them a friendly word to manage them off the pitch. Next ball he ran on and I gave him his first formal warning and then the next over, he wanted to bowl again, and Michael Clarke said: ‘No, you’ve had your chance. Off you go.’

“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 with referrals in some franchise leagues for wides and no balls potentially rendering officials as glorified robots signalling fours and sixes. “I think it is a little sad. They’ll have to have a human there for player management, but I think a lot of it is just going to be up to the Hawkeye boys to make the final decisions.”

Erasmus is of a generation of umpires whose decisions were held up to scrutiny by DRS, they had to accept mistakes and learn to leave their egos in the hotel. Previously umpires never had to endure that instant judgement 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 their reviews because then you can’t fix it. 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, Erasmus ranked Sri Lanka the hardest place to umpire because of the heat and some tricky pitches that bounce and turn more than those in India, for example. “My worst Test ever from a decision-making 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. Players remember the 50-50 decisions from day to day. Sometimes there’s a little comment. ‘You gave one on day one. Why aren’t you giving it on day three?’

“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 Twenty20 game, it’s only four hours and it’s gone. I can remember every Test match but how many of the T20 games do you actually remember? Not many.”

One white-ball match that will never be forgotten is the 2019 tied World Cup final. With England requiring nine 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. Amidst 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?’ That’s when I got to know about it. But in the moment on the field, we just said six, you know, communicated to each other, ‘six, six, it’s six’ not realising that they haven’t crossed, it wasn’t picked up. That’s it.”

Erasmus actually regrets more wrongly giving out Ross Taylor leg before earlier in the day. “It was just too high but they had burnt their review. That was my only error in the whole seven weeks and afterwards I was so disappointed because it would have been an absolute flip had I got through the whole World Cup not making an error and that obviously impacted the game a bit because he was one of their top players.”

Lord’s was a favourite haunt for Erasmus, along with Edgbaston because he played a summer for Solihull, winning the league in 1996. “Two years before me a young Jacques Kallis played at the club and couldn’t win the league, I will take that.”

‘Jonny walked in and it was very frosty’

His final Lord’s Test, last summer, was the most explosive of all. The umpires were powerless other than 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. 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?’ and 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.