Marais Erasmus, a recently retired elite panel umpire, has admited to making a ‘massive’ mistake during the 2019 ODI World Cup final, which England won in a rather controversial fashion at the iconic Lord’s.
If on-field umpires Erasmus and Kumar Dharamsena hadn’t granted England six runs for an overthrow in the 50th over, the game might have ended within regulation time. In that critical moment, with the hosts requiring nine runs from three balls, it was later recognized that England should have only been awarded five runs, as the batters hadn’t completed the second run before the overthrow took place.
“The morning after the final, as I was heading to breakfast and opened my hotel room door, Kumar did the same, and he said, ‘Did you notice we made a significant mistake?’ That’s when I became aware of it,” Erasmus recounted to ‘The Telegraph’.