“The pitch had a corrugated-iron look with green grass and bare patches, plus cracks all over. A length ball would stay low or rise up above your head. It was very dangerous." - Marais Erasmus
An edited extract from “Marais Erasmus: The Rock ’n Roll Years; Cricket in an Umpire’s Orbit” by Telford Vice (Naledi):
IF you were close enough to domestic cricket in South Africa from the late 1980s to the mid 90s to be aware of what was going on in the game away from places like the Wanderers and Newlands, you would have known or at least known about a combative seam-bowling allrounder called Marais Erasmus.
At 1.81 metres tall he tops Dale Steyn by two centimetres. That’s not to say Erasmus was anywhere near as quick as Steyn, but good luck telling any seamer they aren’t as classy as any other. It’s hard-wired into fast bowlers — irrespective of whether they really are fast — that they can knock anyone over. Donald Bradman? Bring him. Viv Richards? Him too. It’s the aggressive intent that matters, and Erasmus had that in spades.
The eyes we’ve come to know as stoic used to be fiery. His calm body language as an umpire was once frenetic. The even-temperedness that is now his trademark used to be a boil of emotion. But not in a fashion that would alienate the fellowship he would join in the following few years.
“I was always trying to put pressure on umpires but never in an aggressive way,” Erasmus says. “I would ask, ‘Outside the line?’ or ‘Missing leg?’ to try and figure out if this guy actually gives the right answers. And then I would appeal more or less depending if I saw a weakness.”
That method worked well enough for Erasmus to take 131 wickets at an average of 28.18 in 53 first-class matches, and claimed seven five-wicket hauls. But that doesn’t tell us how good he was.
Niels Momberg, Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) match officials manager, played against Erasmus at club level. They remain firm friends. “Marais was a good cricketer, probably just above average, but he had a heart as big as this,” Momberg says, and uses his hands to make a shape about the size of a football. “He would bowl into the wind the whole day. He had a very average batting technique, but when the chips were down Marais would get you that 30 or 40 you needed in a three-day game.”
What was Erasmus like, as a player, with umpires? Momberg: “Marais is the nicest guy out there, but he’s a fierce competitor. But he was never a pig. His reputation as a human being stayed intact, and that doesn’t happen in cricket circles if you scream and shout at umpires.”
Among Erasmus’ first-class wickets are those of South Africa Test players Kepler Wessels, Jimmy Cook, Andrew Hudson, Gary Kirsten, Herschelle Gibbs, John Commins, Mark Rushmere, Martin van Jaarsveld, HD Ackerman, Daryll Cullinan, Shaun Pollock, Brian McMillan, Zander de Bruyn and Steve Elworthy. Erasmus dismissed Australia’s Michael Slater and West Indies’ Clayton Lambert twice in the same match. He also got West Indians Carlisle Best and Malcolm Marshall, New Zealander Stephen Fleming, and Zimbabwe’s Neil Johnson.
Fleming was one of six Kiwis who Erasmus removed for 22 runs, four of them single-handedly, in Paarl in December 1994. Those are his career-best figures. But there’s a sting in this tale. Twenty-two wickets fell on the first day of that match. Boland were bowled out for 83 and the New Zealanders for 86, and the home side were 31/2 in their second innings at stumps.
The game had been scheduled for three days, but it was called off one over into the second day immediately after Simon Doull had Andrew Wylie caught behind. The umpires, Brian Jerling and Cyril Mitchley, deemed the pitch dangerous. Was it that bad?
“The pitch had a corrugated-iron look with green grass and bare patches, plus cracks all over,” Erasmus says. “A length ball would either stay low or rise up above your head. It was very dangerous. The surface was just too fresh as it had been laid only five months earlier. My concern was that my 6/22 was not going to be recognised, but the stats counted.”
Momberg had planned to watch the second day’s play, but when he arrived at the ground it was deserted. Almost. “Thys Carstens was Marais’ biology teacher and his cricket coach at school,” Momberg says. “He was also the groundsman at Boland Park. He practically built the place. I arrived and saw him sitting there. He was beside himself because the game had been called off. He was having a drink. And he was not a drinker.”
The match will be remembered neither for Erasmus’ bowling nor Carstens’ pitch. Instead, with time on their hands because of the abandonment, some of the players made their way to Nederburg Wine Estate near Paarl. There they duly became intoxicated — not so much by alcohol but by the cannabis that had been procured by one of the two Boland players in their throng.
According to Fleming’s 2004 biography, Balance of Power, which was written by New Zealand cricket journalist Richard Boock, Fleming, Dion Nash, Bryan Young, Chris Pringle and Danny Morrison were all present. More of the drug went up in smoke at a braai at the New Zealanders’ hotel that night.
Morrison told Rutherford, the captain, what he had witnessed, and the next day Nash, Fleming and Matthew Hart confessed to team management after being called in for questioning. They were each fined NZ$250 — the equivalent of R560 in 1994 — which would buy a lot of weed, especially in Paarl.
The incident couldn’t have been more ill-timed. New Zealand had claimed only their third win in 11 Tests in South Africa at the Wanderers almost a month earlier. But then they lost all five of their completed ODIs in a quadrangular series that also involved Pakistan and Sri Lanka. That was followed by the marijuana mess. Heavy defeats followed in the last two Tests.
So by the time the squad returned to New Zealand in early January 1995, pressure for the suits to do something was high. Peter McDermott, the chair of New Zealand Cricket, spoke of a “malaise that appears to have infected the game” and of “one of the darkest weeks in the history of our sport”. Nash, Fleming and Hart were suspended for three international matches each. Geoff Howarth, the coach, and Mike Sandlant, the manager, left their positions.
Rutherford went home to a truly empty house: his wife had left him, taking with her not only the couple’s children but all the furniture and appliances. Months later Rutherford was, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack reported, “sacked after the home season degenerated into a series of traumas”. He did the sensible thing — he moved to South Africa and played for Transvaal until his retirement in March 2000.
Hang on. If two Boland players were involved in scoring marijuana for the Kiwis, might one of them have been Erasmus? No. That would not be a good look for future deputy headmasters, nevermind future international umpires. But he does have “a good idea of who the culprits were”.
TimesLIVE
“Marais Erasmus: The Rock ’n Roll Years; Cricket in an Umpire’s Orbit” by Telford Vice is available in bookshops and from Naledi’s site.
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