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.