Grief Is The Word

My Two Bobs' Worth On The Woolmer Case


The cricketer was murdered in the middle of a match. No, we're not talking about Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, whose death in Kingston, Jamaica, after one of the most stunning upsets in international cricket history has not  not yet  been classified as a murder investigation.
No, the case I'm talking about was fictional  and it involved the murder of an Australian bowler during a Test match at Lord's. That was the plot of the crime novel `Testkill', written (well, co-written if truth be told) by the late Lord Ted Dexter, the England captain who later served as chairman of selectors.
The novel was published in 1976, around the time that cricket writers found themselves cast for the first time in the unfamiliar role of investigative reporters, uncovering news of the formation of WSC.
On three more occasions in the past 30 years, specialist cricket writers found themselves playing front-page sleuths. First there were the rebel tours of apartheid-era South Africa in the early '80s. Next came the Hansie Cronje match-fixing/ bookie sandal. Finally, as every cricket writer worth his salt is in the West Indies for the World Cup, editors are clamouring for the latest-breaking news in the Woolmer case.
You know the really eerie part? Woolmer was involved in all four of those episodes. He played WSC, he toured South Africa with the rebels, and he was coach of South Africa during the match-fixing police investigations.
But even as news breaks that poison was found in Woolmer's room, it's interesting to note how some sections of the media have jumped the gun. Late yesterday, one overseas website ran a headline saying Woolmer had definitely been poisoned. At that stage, neither police nor cricket authorities had confirmed this or even discussed it in public  and a couple of hours later the website downgraded the headline instead of issuing a `We were wrong'.
But during the 1999 World Cup, the poison pens were out for Woolmer, whose quest was always to merge cricket coaching and technology. He controversially went along with Hansie Cronje's use of an earpiece during a match against India  only to have the ``innovation'' banned.
Woolmer, a professional to the core, would have been as devastated as any of the Pakistan players after the shattering loss to Ireland in last week's World Cup upset. I'm guessing there would have been big money, safe money, on the 1992 world champions to cruise through that encounter.
Is there a connection? Only the police investigation and the toxicology report will tell.
Woolmer is not the first former England cricketer to die suddenly in the West Indies. During England's controversial, politically charged 1980-81 tour of the Caribbean, assistant coach Ken Barrington died in his room.
Barrington, however, died of a heart attack. No one's saying Woolmer was short on ticker.


This is my column from today's edition of mX daily newspaper, a News Ltd publication in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Woolmer's Death `Suspicious'

Police Promise Full Investigation

Mark Shields (pictured below) has probably never faced the full glare of the international media as he did when announcing that the death of Bob Woolmer, Pakistan's cricket coach, was being treated as ``suspicious''.
``Having met with the pathologist, other medical personnel and investigators,'' he said, ``there is now sufficient information to continue a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Woolmer, which we are now treating as suspicious.''
It is 26 years since former England Test cricketer Ken Barrington died during a Test series in the West Indies. But that's where the similarity ends. Barrington, the assistant manager of the touring England side, died of a heart attack.
While the world speculates on the cause of Woolmer's death, some television channels are already reporting that when he was found unconscious, he had marks on his neck. He never regained consciousness and was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
CNN has just reported that experts were being called in to run additional tests on tissue samples, according to information from Sergeant Bevan Brown of the Jamaican police.
Pakistan Cricket Board spokesman Pervez Mir said, ``The pathologist findings were inconclusive, and he is awaiting results of toxicology and histology from the government national laboratory and the government forensic laboratory.''