Newspapers following the World Cup cricket games in Jamaica confirm that controversial Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer was murdered (SLAM, Canada). Various stories indicate an arrest was made, that there may be multiple perpetrators (iol.co.sa), and that Woolmer was going to write a book documenting the team's many problems.
An on-going problem was the on-again, off-again steroid suspension for 2 of Pakistan's best cricket players. An excellent review is carried in theage.com.au. Could a game-fixing ring be responsible for the coach's murder? Was it related to the steroid scandal? The cricket world faces a dirty scandal at the heart of this seamy episode. Welcome to the world of prefessional sports.
Closed-circuit television cameras in the Kingston hotel recorded him last Saturday night as he stood between two oil painting...They featured two of the finest aspects of the game he loved - one of its greatest players in action, and the popular enthusiasm of West Indian youngsters dreaming of Test cricket.
But Woolmer, 58, would have been too distracted to pay much attention to them as he pressed the button for the 12th floor. In Pakistan, his effigy had been burned by furious fans, and any lingering hopes of his becoming England's coach had similarly gone up in smoke...
Woolmer had told colleagues he was going to order room service food. If he did, then the nature of what he consumed is another line of inquiry. The vomit and faeces found in his bathroom indicate that some time on Sunday morning he was suddenly afflicted with a terrible stomach upset...
At 10.45am, a chambermaid knocked on Woolmer's door and entered. She found him unconscious on the bathroom floor, partially wrapped in a towel. He was said to have been lying on his back with his legs splayed and his mouth wide open. A trickle of blood came from his mouth and there was vomit nearby...
The first post-mortem showed that Woolmer had suffered a fractured pharyngeal bone in the side of his neck......In the absence of facts, speculation has turned to match-fixing. Betting on cricket is big business on the Indian subcontinent. On Wednesday, the former Pakistan pace bowler Sarfraz Nawaz claimed that Woolmer had been murdered by a "match-fixing mafia" determined to silence him. The suggestion was angrily rejected by team spokesman Pervez Mir, who described it as "garbage", but the suspicion remains that Woolmer may have been silenced.
It is known that he was in the early stages of preparing a book on his time in Pakistan, where cricket has been the subject of repeated scandals during the past 15 years. The game there has been afflicted by nepotism and factionalism, but most particularly by corruption, a vice shared by the Indian game.
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