Cricket World Cup: Death, Disgrace & Upset

It has been an eventful weekend at the cricket world cup currently being hosted in the West Indies.

Bangladesh upset the odds by beating India. While not expected, it was an outside posibility. Much worse....

On Paddy's day Ireland beat Pakistan - this would be like Andora beating Brazil in the world cup. It was a complete disaster for Pakistan who now cannot progress past the group stage. On top of that their captain, Inzi was fined 50% of his match fee.

The problems got worse for Pakistan as today team coach Bob Woolmer died after colapsing in his hotel room. Woolmer was coach at Warwickshire when the county had a purple patch at the start of the 90's and also lead South Africa though some troubled times when they first were admitted back into international cricket.

Meanwile, life is like a soap opera for England. They are going to beat Canada in a fairly tepid affair (unless something special happens). But, superstar Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff has been omitted from the team, fined and had the vice-captaincy removed for getting pissed up, stealing a peadelo and being rescued from the sea at 4am, 30 hours before an international. What ever happened to "What goes on tour - stays on tour?". At least the action makes up for a very dull Fulham performance.

For more info on Bob Wooler see the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woolmer.

 

There have been the odd occasion that the score book has recorded "Retired Dead" for a batsman, but this is shocking. It is a very sad time for Cricket. The sport was rocked by the behaviour of some players a while back with betting scandles, but this is a whole new level. Murder on the playing fields.... I am now watching and waiting for events to unfold.

 

GBFC, the news of Woolmer's death now being called "natural causes" by Jamacian police barely was a blip on the ESPN news scroll on TV (no big shock since our cricket is called baseball). Just wondering if anybody in the countries where cricket is big are already thinking conspiracy.

 

Hi SoCal, I short - no.

There were a lot of questions about it being murder in the first place. A UK home office pathologist carried out a second autopsy and then the local authorities carried out another and agreed on natural causes. I don't think that there is any conspiracy inside cricket as the worse result has already happened (2 months of thinkning a leading coach had been murdered) - unless people were hoping that the murderer woukd be a cricketer.

In terms of a conspiracy, the UK sent out members of Scotland Yard to help the local authorities carry out an investigation under the glare of the media spot light. Like all things, once more than a handfull of people know the truth then it become imposible to silence the rumours. Since there has been no hint of a cover up then I feel there probably has not been one. At the end of the day, both the Jamacian and UK police are well outside the sphere of infulence of the ICC and are not likely to have pressure applied by their governements to protect Indian bookmakers (who were the most likely suspects).

I hope now that Woolmer can be remembered for the things that he bought to the game, especially his unique coaching and bringing fielding to a whole new level.

What is worrying is the speed at which it was accepted that it was murder and that corruption was probably involved, it's a damning criticism of the game.