“A more boring life is what I’m looking for.” – Marais Erasmus
Telford Vice / Cape Town
WHAT does Marais Erasmus want for his 61st birthday? To be bored, preferably at home. He spent his 60th, on Tuesday, 11,500 kilometres away from South Africa in New Zealand preparing to officiate in the men’s Test series against Australia. It will be his last international engagement.
“I’ll miss the privileges and the travelling,” Erasmus told Cricbuzz on Wednesday from Wellington, where the first Test starts on Thursday. “But I’ve had enough of being away and living outside of my comfort zone. I think having a more boring life is what I’m looking for.” He delivered the last line with the naughty chuckle that only those who know him outside the necessarily staid realm of umpiring would have heard.
From his debut in a men’s T20I between South Africa and Australia at the Wanderers in February 2006, he has stood in 80 Tests, 124 ODIs and 43 T20Is played by men, in 18 women’s T20Is, and as the television official in 131 men’s internationals across the formats.
“I decided in October last year and I informed the ICC that I would finish my contract in April and that would be that,” Erasmus said, denying reports implying he had been told to quit because of his age.
What would he do with his downtime? “For the first couple of months I’m just going to take the winter off. We have some travel planned domestically, and from September I’ll be in the hands of CSA. We still need to finalise how they want to use me. I’ll umpire in domestic cricket next season and play a mentoring role. I might go to the Khaya Majola Week [a schools event] or the club championships, and I’ll be watching and advising umpires.” Erasmus said he hoped to continue the work in the latter area done by his close friend Murray Brown, who died on February 8, and Shaun George, who died on Saturday.
What would he miss about being part of the ICC’s elite panel, which he joined in 2010? “The challenge of the job, being in that moment of trying to get it right. That’s always something special and tough, and it’s exhilarating when you have a good game.”
He might also yearn for the company of some of his colleagues: “There’s lots of camaraderie, because we’re all in it together even though there’s competition between the guys. We all understand the highs and the lows, and that when someone is going through a rough period you need to support him because your turn will come.”
Erasmus recommended umpiring as a profession “if you’re passionate about cricket”. His own passion burned brightly enough to keep him in the game after he had retired after playing 53 first-class and 54 list A games from December 1988 to December 1996 as a combative Boland seam bowling allrounder.
“To have seen the best players and been to the iconic venues and World Cups is a massive privilege,” Erasmus said. “It’s been quite a journey from being a schoolboy who kept score while watching Eddie Barlow play at Newlands.”
Along the way he’s been to the 2023, 2019, 2015 and 2011 men’s ODI World Cups, all eight editions of what is now called the men’s T20 World Cup and three of the women’s version. He has stood in 14 Ashes Tests, seven games between India and Pakistan, and in 10 editions of the IPL.
But several times he has had to celebrate his birthday — which he shares with Graeme Pollock, who turned 80 this year — without his family and far from his home in the Western Cape hamlet of Malmesbury. On February 27, 2008 he was at the men’s under-19 World Cup in Malaysia. Two years later he was in India for a tour by England. He had another birthday in India in 2013 for Australia’s visit. The year after that Erasmus blew out the candles in the Caribbean, during a series involving England. In 2015 he was in New Zealand for an Australia rubber. Five years later it was back to West Indies for Sri Lanka’s tour.
You don’t get to do all that if you don’t know what you’re doing. Erasmus, who joined the ICC’s elite panel in 2010, knows what he’s doing well enough to have won the David Shepherd Trophy — the prize the ICC awards annually to the world’s best umpire — in 2016, 2017 and 2021. Only Simon Taufel, who landed the first five from 2004, has claimed the trophy more often.
Even so, Erasmus has often been at the centre of drama on the field. It was he, for instance, who during a World Cup match between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in Delhi in November correctly upheld the appeal that made Angelo Mathews the first batter to be timed out in international cricket.
“We need to find a different way of administrating that situation,” Erasmus said. “Yes, it’s the responsibility of the player, and maybe if we find a different way the players will abuse it. But I think that debate is wide open. It wasn’t something I wanted to be part of at a World Cup, but I had to apply the law.”
The relevant section says: “After the fall of a wicket or the retirement of a batter, the incoming batter must, unless time has been called, be ready to receive the ball, or for the other batter to be ready to receive the next ball within three minutes of the dismissal or retirement. If this requirement is not met the incoming batter will be out, timed out.”
Mathews, not least because he had to resolve an issue with the strap of his helmet, was not ready to face within three minutes. But the incident spawned a slew of criticism of the umpires, much of it rooted in ignorance and parochialism. You could understand how a touch of boredom, preferably at home, might be welcome after that.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 