Crime, cash and cricket

AS the investigation into the murder of cricket coach Bob Woolmer intensifies, Sports Editor STUART HENDERSON comments on how the

honest man of cricket may have fallen foul of the darker side of the game...



ANYONE who knew Bob Woolmer can verify that his association with the game of cricket was borne out of a deep and lasting affection for it.

When he batted for Kent (and he did so in no less than 350 first-class games), he played with a grace and fluidity that is completely at odds with the way he was strangled so savagely on the 12th floor of the Pegasus Hotel at the Cricket World Cup.

Although Jamaican police have reportedly investigated details of an argument between Woolmer and members of Pakistan's cricket team following their surprise loss to Ireland, match-fixing, or, more precisely, spot-fixing, appears most likely to be at the centre of the reasons behind his death. The sport has a regrettable recent association with match-fixing. Leading lights such as former South Africa captain Hansie Cronje, former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin and former Pakistan captain Salim Malik were all given life bans after being found guilty of match fixing at the turn of the century. However, because of the precarious nature of rigging the actual outcome of a game and the suspicions any shock defeat arouses, 'spot-fixing' has become an increasingly prevalent form of gambling in Pakistan and India in recent years. Spot-fixing focuses on moments in games, rather than the result itself.

You can, for example, bet on how many wides a player bowls in a game, how many runs will be scored in a particular over or how a certain batsman will be dismissed. It is a far more sophisticated and complicated way of betting, which makes it a much more attractive way for the mafia-style gangs who organise gambling on the sub-continent to run their illegal syndicates. Woolmer's contemporary and former South African skipper Clive Rice is convinced his countryman has fallen foul of south Asian gangs who have long been accused of influencing players' performances and officials with large sums of money.

The warning signs have certainly been there. Former England captain Ian Botham said back in 2001 that illegal gambling in cricket 'has to be sorted or someone will be assassinated'.

It looks at the moment as if he was right, and if that is the case and cricket's ruling body the International Cricket Board (ICC) sat in their offices twiddling their thumbs hoping the problem would go away, then it will make the death of one of Kent's truest servants even more tragic.

When county cricketers reach the end of their careers, it is common-place for them to go off to another club for more money to see out their remaining two or three years on the circuit. Bob Woolmer was different. Woolmer began his professional career at Kent and ended it at Kent.

That he stayed with the county he grew up in demonstrates how much he respected the game of cricket and, above all, how much he loved it. If match-fixing has played a part in the death of one of the sport's most honest men, then the ICC, who are charged with protecting the game, will have to ask themselves what they did and didn't do to prevent it.

stuart.henderson@archant.co.uk



COUNTDOWN TO TRAGEDY:

MARCH 17: Pakistan lose to Ireland and exit the Cricket World Cup in the West Indies.

MARCH 18: Woolmer is found unconscious in his room and taken to hospital. He is pronounced dead at midday.

MARCH 19: Woolmer's family give consent for a post-mortem to be carried out.

MARCH 22: Police say they are treating the death as murder.

MARCH 27: Police declare they are not ruling out the possibility Woolmer was the victim of a hit.