Marais Erasmus recently drew curtains on his umpiring career after officiating in more than 250 international cricket matches. The South African had a great rapport with the international cricketer, given his accurate decisions on the field. But humans are bound to commit mistakes and even Erasmus did in a crucial game, like the ICC World Cup 2019 final, featuring England and New Zealand.
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Speaking to The Telegraph, Erasmus admitted to making a ‘massive mistake’ in the highly-electrifying World Cup 2019 final that saw England winning their first-ever title, in a rather controversial fashion at the Lord’s.
The Eoin Morgan-led side lifted the coveted trophy for the first time, edging New Zealand on the now-scrapped boundary countback rule after both teams were tied following a Super Over. However, the game could have ended in regulation time if on-field umpires, Erasmus and Kumar Dharamsena did not award England six runs for an overthrow in the 50th over with the hosts needing nine runs from three balls.
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Following the conclusion of the game, the duo realised that England should have been awarded only five runs as the batters had not crossed for the second run.
“The next morning (after the final) 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,” Erasmus told ‘The Telegraph’.
“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 admitted to another mistake in the final played five years ago when he adjudged Ross Taylor lbw off Mark Wood.
“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,” added the South African.
Throughout his long umpiring career, Erasmus was least pressurised by New Zealand, the perennial good guys of the game while the likes of Ricky Ponting and Mahela Jayawardene tried to intimidate him and his colleagues.
“They (New Zealand) were always very, very respectful”, while Ponting and Jayawardene “tried to intimidate us. Sometimes it was subtle and sometimes not subtle,” he further said.
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