“I was a bit worried they might think I’m some kind of sex offender. The younger woman, she had a smile, a twinkle in her eye. The older one was very, very serious and not happy with me.” - 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’ve read Moby-Dick, and we all should — it is not considered a pioneer of postmodernism for nothing — you will know that in chapter 31, titled “Queen Mab”, Stubb, the Pequod’s second mate, tells Flask, the third mate, about a dream he had in which captain Ahab kicked him using his ivory leg.
In the dream, Ahab then turns into a pyramid and a hunchbacked merman appears and tells Stubb he should consider it an honour to be kicked by something so valuable. Stubb relates his surreal story on the deck of the ship with Ahab “standing there, looking sideways over the stern”. It is a wonderfully weird and evocative passage of 861 words, and you turn the page expecting the narrative to jolt forward. It doesn’t.
Chapter 32 is called “Cetology”, as in the study of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Its 5,207 words begin thus: “Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored harborless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow.”
That’s Herman Melville’s way of telling his readers to sit tight. The gripping saga of Ahab’s maniacal pursuit of the white whale across the waves will continue. But first, education: a chapter listing the various kinds of whales and their differing value to those who hunt them on the high seas.
Whatever you think of whaling, it’s an audacious move to chuck a chunk of that kind of writing into the middle of an otherwise rollicking adventure story. I do not for a moment consider myself cricketwriting’s Herman Melville, but I am interested in the nuts and bolts attached to the subjects of what I write about.
So stand by for the edited highlights of what Marais Erasmus packed into his bag as a member of international cricket’s travelling umpiring circus (and if you demand relevance for this chunk of words it’s that in May 2025, the Erasmuses moved to Hermanus; once a centre of whaling, now central to the conservation of these magnificent creatures):
“At one stage, among the sponsored clothes issued by the ICC that we had in our bags, were undergarments. But the quality was woeful and the sizes were even more rubbish …
“I always travelled with a South African flag. On the odd occasion I was able to go to a sporting event, like watching Super 12 rugby in Dunedin at the old ‘House of Pain’ [Carisbrook], or going to Wimbledon. I went to a Grand Prix athletics meeting at the Olympic Stadium in London a couple of years after the 2012 Games. You’re never sure when an opportunity to see something like that will come along, so I always travelled with my flag in my bag …
“One of the cricket tools I always had to carry was a ball gauge. The shape of it, when it’s open, makes it look like a pair of handcuffs. Anyway, I was travelling to Dubai for cricket. And as I was leaving the airport there, I went through the green zone. I was asked by two very sturdy, serious-looking women — one older, one younger — to put my bag through the scanners, because they do spot checks of the people going through the green zone. When my bag went through, they were concerned and they asked me to open it …
“One of them said to me, ‘Take out your handcuffs.’ I was a bit worried they might think I’m some kind of sex offender. But I wasn’t thinking of my ball gauge. I'm thinking, ‘Handcuffs? Handcuffs? What the hell could this be …
“The younger woman, she had a smile, a twinkle in her eye. The older one was very, very serious and not happy with me …
“Suddenly I remembered I’ve got this little Tupperware box. I keep all my extra counters and pens and pencils in there for when I’m the TV umpire. And the ball gauge …
“So eventually I took it out and explained to them that this is what I use to measure cricket balls. Luckily there was an Indian baggage handler around who could speak a bit of Arabic and could explain to them that this was definitely not a sex toy, but just my ball gauge …”
A disclaimer: I started writing this chapter before I told Erasmus about my highfalutin literary idea for it. So all thoughts about dicks and balls are entirely serendipitous. Or, as with those two sex toy hunters in Dubai, entirely of your own making, dear and gentle reader …
Rapport
“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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