A Sticky Wicket: Murder on the Pitch

There’s a different sort of March Madness going on.

While many sports fans in America have been filling out their brackets for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, much of the rest of the world (an estimated 2 billion viewers) have been focusing on the Cricket World Cup, held this year in the West Indies. In one of the greatest matches in history, cricket powerhouse Pakistan was defeated by Ireland. That the match took place on St. Patrick’s Day only made the victory more storybook.

What happened next was even more shocking. Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach, was found unconscious on the floor of his hotel room and died hours later in a Jamaican hospital. Instantly, rumors began to swirl that the Woolmer was murdered, with one former Pakistani player placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of game-fixers at cricket’s highest levels.

"Bob must have seen how Pakistan team went about its business against West Indies. You could sense it from their body language that something was amiss. I believe he was writing a book and he would have come off with sensational disclosures.

"I surely feel that he has been bumped off. It was the betting mafia which eliminated Hansie Cronje. It was the same betting mafia which killed "Cadbury" the well-known bookie from Pakistan who later settled in South Africa. "Cadbury" body was cut into pieces. Now that has been the fate of Woolmer."

Sarfraz openly claimed that captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, along with Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Mushtaq Ahmed, Mohammad Yousuf and Shoaib Malik were involved in betting.

Last Monday, it seemed that some of the conspiracy theories might be justified when police determined that Woolmer was strangled, with more than one person involved in the murder. Many stories have centered on a book that Mr. Woolmer was reportedly set to publish.

Now that police have confirmed that the coach was indeed murdered speculation will mount that his death came because he was about to lift the lid on illegal behaviour in the world of cricket, especially after three years as the coach of Pakistan, who have been dogged by allegations of corruption and match-fixing.

Mr Woolmer was about to publish a memoir that many believe contained damning allegations about world cricket. He was South Africa’s coach when Hansie Cronje, the team’s captain, was exposed as a cheat who took £125,000 in 2000 to throw matches.

Malcolm Speed, chief executive of the International Cricket Council (ICC), would not rule out corruption as a motive. “We don’t know whether this is corruption-related at this stage,” he said. “We believe that in the past few years we have been able to keep corruption under control.”

As the investigation enters its second week, players from Woolmer’s own team have been interviewed and fingerprinted by local authorities, and some have found a hint of racism in the coverage, if not the investigation, of this murder. The players on the Pakistani team have been cleared by Jamaican police, a fact that has received less press than the initial accusations of both murder and game-fixing.

The fact that three members of Pakistan's squad, including the captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, were questioned by police on Saturday was blazed in banner headlines. That police immediately confirmed the questioning was routine and declared that the entire team was free to leave the country was buried in the columns below.

But never mind the facts, it's easier to stick to stereotypes. We all know that south Asians take their cricket too seriously (which they do), that corruption is rife in these societies (which is true), and that wiliness and duplicity are part of the oriental (or Muslim) character (which is idiocy).

Since the Irish humiliation, the Pakistan cricket management - the chairman of the cricket board, the selectors and the captain - have all resigned. This represents an instance of rapid accountability exceptional in either the cricket world or in Pakistani public life. Significantly, it leaves Pakistan cricket entirely in the hands of its "patron in chief", General Musharraf.

Over the next month, the final eight teams remaining--including current champs Australia and top ranked South Africa--will battle it out for the right to hoist the Cricket World Cup Trophy. Hopefully, attention can return the battle on the pitch, rather than the one that is sure to waged in the courts and newspapers

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