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Marais Erasmus, who recently gave up his umpiring hat revealed his conversation with Kumar Dharmasena a day after the 2019 World Cup final. Erasmus, who is known as one of the most elite umpires acknowledged a significant error by the on-field umpires, which saw England clinching the victory controversially at the Lord’s. The thrilling final that saw a tie and a super-over was used to determine a winner had a moment of controversy.
During the game, a moment of controversy happened when an outfield throw from Martin Guptill struck Ben Stokes; bat and deflected it to the boundary benefiting England massively. The umpires awarded England six runs that reduced the gap from the target and England only needed 3 runs off 2 balls. However, as per the regulations, only five runs should have been given instead of six runs as the batters didn’t cross the run.
Marais Erasmus recalls 'massive error' made in 2019 World Cup final
Erasmus recalled his conversation with Kumar Dharmasena a day after the final and revealed the error they made during the match. In an interview with Telegraph Cricket, Erasmus said, "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. 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 was more disappointed with his LBW decision to dismiss Ross Taylor and revealed, "It was just too high but they had burnt their review. That was my only error in the whole seven weeks and afterward, 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.”
