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Murder, most foul

The cause has been established but the motives remain a subject of troubled and fervid speculation. The murder of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer has sent a deep and disquieting shudder across the cricketing world. The timing of the attack (a few hours after Pakistan's bewildering loss against little-fancied Ireland) and the manner of its execution (by manual strangulation in a high security hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica) suggest that this is no ordinary murder. The Jamaican police, who have conducted themselves with commendable circumspection and refused to be drawn into making unnecessary conjectures about the case, are not ruling anything out. Not even the possibility — slim though it seems — that Woolmer's murder was the handiwork of an obsessive cricket fan, upset over Pakistan's summary and humiliating exit from the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007. Suspicions that Woolmer's killing is the result of a much more complex and ominous conspiracy have arisen partly because of the circumstances. There was no evidence of forced entry into his hotel room, no sign that he put up a struggle, and none of his possessions were stolen — all of which together strongly suggest that Woolmer, as the Jamaican police have indicated, knew the person or persons who murdered him.

There is also no evidence yet to corroborate the widespread hypothesis that Woolmer, who also coached South Africa and the Warwickshire county team, was killed at the behest of the match-fixing and betting syndicate. Nevertheless, the shocking murder has turned the spotlight on cricket's seamy underbelly and raised suspicions that Woolmer was silenced to hush up sensitive information about Pakistan's World Cup performance. The former international cricketer, who played 19 Test matches and six one day internationals for England, had made a set of recommendations to the Pakistan Cricket Board to curb match-fixing. If the match-fixing syndicate was responsible for the outrage in Kingston, then this is the second time such a murder was carried out by cricket's shadowy underworld. In 1999, the badly disfigured body of a notorious Pakistani bookmaker, Hanif Kodvavi (alias `Cadbury') was discovered in Johannesburg, amidst strong rumours that he was done in for not squaring up his betting dues. The match-fixing and betting mafia operates at an international level and it is wholly appropriate that an organisation like Scotland Yard has been called in to participate in the investigation. When it was initially believed that Woolmer died of drug overdose, his death cast a pall of gloom over the World Cup. News that it is murder has cast a dark cloud over the very game of cricket.

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