Any cricket fans?

[bill bolton]

Woolmer death darkens cricket world

By Matthew Engel in London and Reuters in Kingston

Published: March 23 2007 19:01 | Last updated: March 23 2007 19:01

International cricket, the game considered – by outsiders, at least – as the epitome of gentility and fair play was on Friday struggling to accept the reality that one of its favourite sons had been murdered.

Jamaican police revealed late on Thursday that Bob Woolmer, the Pakistani coach and former England player, had been strangled, four days after he had been found dying in his Kingston hotel room.

Police were on Friday awaiting results of scientific tests Woolmer’s body, ordered after the autopsy report initially proved “inconclusive”.

“We have still not received the results of the tests,” said a police spokesman. “We cannot at this stage tell you when the results will become available, but as soon as they are, we will pass them on to the media.”

Deputy police commissioner Mark Shields, who is leading the investigation, said Woolmer’s body would probably leave Jamaica by Saturday.

It was initially assumed 58-year-old Woolmer had suffered a heart attack. But his death came less than 24 hours after Pakistan had been knocked out of the World Cup by Ireland, one of the most stunning upsets in cricket history.

In the 1990s, when cricket was rocked by a series of match-fixing incidents linked to illegal bookmaking in Asia, Pakistani players were at the centre of the revelations. And speculation on Friday was that Woolmer, a notably open and outspoken figure in a game full of obfuscators, was murdered because he was about to blow the whistle on a new outbreak of scandal.

However, Ivo Tennant, a British journalist who was working with Woolmer on a new book, said they had so far produced 10,000 words together and none of them was revelatory. Woolmer’s family also denied that he had any such plans.

Pakistan lost a World Cup match to Bangladesh in 1999, which was almost certainly tainted. However, that match was meaningless – Pakistan had already qualified for the later stages and Bangladesh were already out – so it would have been an easy game to fix.

Though the gangs involved in the gambling rings centred in Mumbai and the Gulf deal in big money by subcontinental standards, there has never been evidence that players could be bribed sufficiently to compensate for the potential riches available to the World Cup winners. It seems improbable they would have lost to Ireland deliberately.

Players are now closely supervised by an anti-corruption unit run by the once-complacent International Cricket Council (ICC). Most observers believe that any cheating that still goes on is most likely to involve lower-level fiddles about individual scores.

With a minimum of facts and hours of cable news airtime to fill, speculation was nonetheless rampant on Friday. Jamaican police did reveal that Woolmer had been manually asphyxiated, that there were no signs of forced entry and that he was apparently found next to his bathroom in a towel.

This all suggested that his murderer or murderers were unarmed and that he knew them well enough to let them in and greet them informally. Since he was an ex-sportsman, still pretty fit and strong, it also hints that there probably was more than one of them.

The Pakistani players, due to fly home on Saturday, were fingerprinted and DNA-tested at their base in Montego Bay on Friday. The world’s other leading cricketers were battling to remain in the competition, which continues at centres all over the English-speaking Caribbean until the final in Barbados on April 28.

There were calls on Friday for the tournament to be cancelled. These were led by the retired fast bowler Allan Donald, who played under Woolmer when he was South African coach. “I just don’t know how this World Cup can continue under the shadow of what’s happened,” Donald said.

However, Malcolm Speed, the ICC’s chief executive, had already swept this notion aside. The ICC is deeply wedded to the notion that the show must always go on. Results at the 2003 World Cup, held in Africa, were hopelessly skewed when New Zealand refused to play in Kenya and England refused to play in Zimbabwe. Both cited fears for their safety; both were still forced to forfeit the matches.

Millions of dollars have been spent building new facilities across the West Indies for this tournament, and it would take far more than a single unexplained murder to force cancellation.

Nonetheless, the World Cup is now in deep shadow, and so is cricket. The Jamaica Pegasus Hotel is close to some of the dangerous districts of a dangerous city, and cricketers staying there have long been warned not to stray out of the hotel grounds.

Yet this seemingly baffling case seems to belong more to the country-house tradition of British detective fiction: that mix of crime, cucumber sandwiches and indeed cricket. No one, however, is relishing what might unfold in Jamaica. The game grieves for one of its best-loved figures; it desperately needs the mystery solved quickly, and without further damage to its reputation.

[gator]

Dang, India is out of the world cup

[tomh009]

Windies are through, perfect record in Group D!

England next, unless Kenya manages to knock them off in tomorrow's match.

[ryengineer]

Today Australia's gonna play major seed South Africa.

[Paranoid_TP_User]

It's pretty mental that that guy was strangled all right

[bill bolton]

The final is Australia versus Bangladesh.

Will Australian pull off a hat-trick with a 3rd win in a row of the World Cup, and also remaining unbeaten in this Cup competition?

C'mon Aussie, C'mon!

[Windies accent]
We've heard a lot of noise now
About the Aussie boys now
And how they have a better team this year
Their loyalty is moving, but they surely need improving
Or else they'll go down under, have no fear

[Windies accent] C'mon Aussie show us what you got
[Aussie accent] Enough to put you Windies on the spot
[Windies accent] I wouldn't like to bet that
[Aussie accent] Mate you'll regret that
[Aussie & Windies accent] It's a year that won't be easily forgot!

[Aussie accent] Wheel 'em in, we'll whack 'em for six
[Windies accent] Don't make me laugh, you're giving me the stitch
[Aussie accent] What about our pacemen?
[Windies accent] Brother we'll disgrace them
[Aussie & Windies accent] Let's sort it out when we get on the pitch

[Windies accent] C'mon Aussie c'mon c'mon
[Aussie accent] C'mon Aussie c'mon c'mon
[Windies accent] C'mon Aussie c'mon c'mon
[Aussie accent] C'mon Aussie c'mon


Cheers,

Bill B.

[ryengineer]

The final is Australia versus Bangladesh.

Bill B.

Bill, that's SriLanka not Bangladesh.