The Hindu : Sport : ICC to probe match-fixing angle

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Sunday, Mar 25, 2007
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ICC to probe match-fixing angle

KINGSTON: The international governing body of cricket said on Friday it would investigate whether match-fixing was a motive for the murder of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, who was strangled after his team was upset by Ireland.

Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Shields said police believed more than one person might have killed Woolmer, 58, in his 12th-floor hotel room on Sunday.

Police said they were reviewing security cameras in and around the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.

Patrick Murphy, a coroner in Jamaica, said Woolmer's body must remain on the Caribbean island until an inquest is held. A date for that has not been set.

Separately, the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit will investigate if match-fixing had a role in Woolmer's death, council chief executive Malcolm Speed said.

``Our people from the anti-corruption and security unit will cooperate with the Jamaica police, they're working with them already,'' Speed told Britain's Sky TV. ``If there is a link we want to know about it and we will deal with it.''

Woolmer was South Africa's coach in the 1990s when the team's captain, Hansie Cronje, admitted taking money to fix matches and was banned from cricket for life. Woolmer was never implicated.

The coach was last seen going to his room on Saturday night after the Pakistan team, normally a world powerhouse, was upset by underdog Ireland in the first round of the World Cup.

Affable coach

Whoever killed the affable coach gained access to his room without forcing the door open and attacked Woolmer without people in neighbouring rooms noticing anything amiss. Access to guest floors is restricted at the hotel — a card key is required to operate the elevators.

``We have some theories of what may have happened, but it's too early to go public with them,'' Shields said on Friday on Jamaican radio.

Pakistan team spokesman Pervez Jamil Mir said Woolmer was upset that galleys of his book had disappeared. ``Bob told me the proofs had been misplaced and he was very disturbed.'' Mir said. ``Contrary to reports, we can confirm there is nothing in any book Bob has written that would explain this situation and there were no threats received,'' Woolmer's agent, Michael Cohen, read from a statement in front of Woolmer's widow, Gill, and two sons, Dale and Russell, at the family home in Cape Town, South Africa.

``Bob was a wonderful husband and father and a cricket coach. `He gave his life to the service of cricket and cricketers,'' Cohen said. — AP

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