BOOK EXTRACT: Marais Erasmus abandoned the safety net and became an umpiring legend

An extract from Marais Erasmus: The Rock ’n Roll Years; Cricket in an Umpire’s Orbit by Telford Vice.

Talented home cooks are not restaurant chefs. Golf’s weekend warriors do not turn pro. Burying bottles filled with pineapple peels, sugar and yeast at the bottom of a shoe cupboard for a while does not a beer brewer make.

Our relationship with so much changes when we are expected to produce on schedule, to a high standard and, particularly, in return for enough money to pay the bills and maybe even live a little. It’s the difference between amateurs, however gifted or mediocre, and professionals. Umpiring is no different.

While he was a teacher, Erasmus knew he had a safety net. He ended that career in November 2007, and suddenly there was nothing between the tightrope he walked to provide for his family and the ground below. Except being paid to umpire.

“I loved umpiring and it was going well, and maybe that’s why I didn’t put too much pressure on myself,” Erasmus says. “But when I left teaching and umpiring was the only thing, that’s when I felt pressure – now this had to work. Early on I told myself I could go back to teaching. But, after five or six years, I knew I didn’t want to go back.”

Pressure? Marais Erasmus? Who knew? He exudes a quiet but unshakeable assurance, a feeling that he knows what is going to happen next and has prepared for it. This cannot be true, but that’s how it feels when you’re in his presence. It’s the perfect quality for an umpire to have. It tells the players, the crowd, the television audience and the media who is the adult on the field.

If you make an appointment to see Erasmus, he will not ask for confirmation on the day that your meeting is to go ahead. Maybe he’s old-fashioned that way, but it’s more fun to think of him as prescient. He will arrive before you do, even if you’re bang on time. When you walk through the door he will glance up as if he knew you would be right there at that exact instant.

A small, sweet smile will tug at the corners of his magisterial mouth and light up a face that will look like it has met a moonbeam. Some people, you will think as you look at him, simply sail through life.

Watching him walk onto the field paints the same picture. He glides lightly as he goes, on his way to do something enjoyable, invariably chatting genially with his colleagues. Most of them, anyway. Pressure? This bloke?

Happily, then, Erasmus didn’t have to worry about having to go back to teaching: “I kept seeing progress. By my sixth season I was at international level. I was never frustrated.”

Erasmus’s sto