Bob update woolmer

Now he was the coach of a nation that had been closely connected to a phenomenon that struck at the very heart of sport.

While ICC officials were debating whether the World Cup should continue, a central figure entered the drama, the public face of the murder investigation. A man who was to take enthusiastically to the spotlight. The truth about his career was actually a little more prosaic, and Shields had spent much of his time not at Scotland Yard but with the City of London police. Now he was deputy commissioner of the Jamaican police in Kingston — which has one of the highest murder rates in the world — far away from fraud and financial crimes.

It was known that Woolmer was working on two books, one a coaching manual with Tim Noakes, a South African sports scientist, and the other an updated version of his autobiography, with his friend Ivo Tennant, a Times journalist.

Could he have been about to lift the lid on match-fixing, having been involved with Cronje and in the murky world of Pakistani cricket? And could he have been silenced before he had the chance to do so? No, said Noakes. No, said Tennant. Could Woolmer have been thinking, however, about a third book, specifically about his time in Pakistani cricket?

And could it have been news of that which got back to very dangerous ears? There were drug allegations, there were ball-tampering allegations. There were also religious differences in that side. Samiuddin said he had received an email from Woolmer saying that he would only begin on that project after the World Cup.

In the end it did, as the show always must, as a tribute to Bob Woolmer. Sadly, it provided little cricketing drama and joie de vivre in his name. Shields, meanwhile, came galloping to the fore. Theories were everywhere, all of them chilling and barely comprehensible. If Woolmer was the victim of gangsters, this might explain why there were no obvious signs of injury.

Was he forced into the bathroom and strangled with the aid of a towel to cover up thumbprints or the burn marks that a ligature would have left? Or was he first rendered helpless, possibly with chloroform or with drugs in his food? Sarfraz, ever one for a conspiracy theory, claimed that Pakistan fixed their earlier defeat against West Indies, thinking it would still be easy for them to progress to the second round by beating Ireland and Zimbabwe, only the ploy went terribly wrong when they found themselves up against a highly motivated Irish side.

Bob must have seen how the Pakistan team went about its business. You could see it from their body language that something was amiss. It was also pointed out that Pakistan were on with bookmakers to beat Ireland, who were outsiders. Closed-circuit television footage taken from the 12th-floor corridor was converted from analogue to digital. An unnamed government source said this was poison.

A BBC TV investigation claimed that the toxicology report did indeed prove Woolmer was drugged and poisoned with a herb called aconite. As time went on, however, the plot either thickened or thinned, depending on your point of view.

Shields went unusually quiet. There were whispers that all was not quite as we had imagined. By May 20 police were privately admitting that their pathologist was wrong.

In any event, by June 4, the central figure in this plot had become the Indian-born pathologist Dr Ere Seshaiah, a man who had been kept very busy for 12 years conducting investigations into murders in Kingston. Seshaiah claimed to have graduated with an MD in India before becoming a forensic pathologist in Jamaica in Before being appointed chief state pathologist, he would normally have had to acquire a postgraduate degree, publish papers and become a fellow of various pathology institutions, but by his own admission he had never taken an exam in forensic pathology since graduation.

Shields started to backtrack. Three independent pathologists, they said, had come to this conclusion. Next accounts made up to 30 April due by 31 January Last accounts made up to 31 March Next statement date 10 October due by 24 October Cookies on Companies House services We use some essential cookies to make our services work. Accept analytics cookies Reject analytics cookies View cookies. Hide this message. Cookies on Companies House services We use cookies to make our services work and collect analytics information.

They were released later that night but, as they trooped across the tarmac to the plane, reporters screamed: 'Did you kill Woolmer? Meanwhile, back in Kingston, Shield's press conference was chaotic.

A teetering pile of dictaphones were placed on the table in front of him. Two days earlier he had declared that Woolmer was murdered, the exact cause of death 'asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation'. Now the implication seemed to be that the Pakistan trio were suspects. Shields was especially interested in finding out why Talat had suddenly changed his name to a false one at the Pegasus in the period after Woolmer's death.

He mentioned unexplained scratch marks on Mushtaq's face - Woolmer had been found with cuts to the bridge of his nose. Was this evidence of a struggle? The Pakistan team eventually left Jamaica that night. But, amid all the gossip of sinister Asian betting syndicates and CCTV footage that would reveal the identity of the killer or killers, their return seemed inevitable. That night, police briefings appeared to indicate that Woolmer's killer may have come from within the Pakistan camp.

Soon afterwards, it was reported that three Pakistan officials had gone missing and were now suspects. Reports surfaced of a row between Woolmer and his players on the team bus after the Ireland defeat. Shields suggested Woolmer's killers were not Jamaican gangsters; Yardies used guns or knives. But then something changed. During a press briefing two days later, Shields's body language betrayed doubt.

He had been ' per cent certain' that Woolmer was strangled. Now he qualified his conviction to avoid being, as he put it, 'professionally embarrassed'. So was Woolmer murdered or not? Some Jamaican detectives were, from the start, unconvinced that it was murder. Officers who first entered Woolmer's bathroom on 18 March had concluded, from what they saw, that he was not murdered. There were no marks on him.

No sign of a struggle. But their expert consensus was overruled by senior officers. Apparent blunders followed in the forensic investigation. Cautionary protocols were disregarded. Bob's widow, Gill, at home in Cape Town, told friends that she believed 'mistakes were made' by investigators. In addition, further evidence indicated that Woolmer's health was worse than previously believed.

It has since emerged that Scotland Yard, who were assisting Shields, first raised the possibility that Woolmer was not murdered as early as late April. Yet another 45 days passed before, on 12 June, the Jamaican Constabulary Force announced that Woolmer had in fact died of natural causes. It was not murder. There was no murderer. So who was Bob Woolmer? And why, for all his reported charm and amiability, was he caught up in the greatest scandals of modern cricket? He was born in Kanpur, India, on 14 May , the son of a cricket-loving father who worked as a civil servant and once captained the United Provinces team in India's domestic championship.

He was a talented schoolboy all-rounder, and, at the age of 20, he joined the Kent county staff. In , he made his England debut against Australia at Lord's. But in , at his peak, he joined World Series Cricket , Kerry Packer's breakaway competition in Australia, one of six England players who turned out for a World team against sides representing Australia and West Indies.

Woolmer played World Series cricket for the money but, unlike the other England players who signed for Packer he was under 30 and, it had been assumed, had a long future ahead of him as a Test player. I suspect that he was strongly influenced by Alan Knott and Derek Underwood, who were two of his senior team-mates in the Kent dressing room and also joined.

On his return to the England side, Woolmer failed to hold down a regular place and, in , took part in the rebel tour of apartheid South Africa, led by Graham Gooch. Underwood and Knott were also on the tour.

This time, he was banned from playing for England for three years, effectively ending his international career at the age of Woolmer chased money, but he was no white supremacist. When his playing career was over, he coached a 'Coloured' team named Avendale in Cape Town and was delighted when the township embraced the sport.

Woolmer, who had by now met and married Gill, returned to England in , coaching first at Kent and then, to great success, Warwickshire, who won an unprecedented treble in Former South Africa Test star Allan Donald, who describes Woolmer as his mentor and called for the World Cup to be abandoned when it was announced that the coach had been murdered, played for that Warwickshire side. I told him he had no worries - I didn't have a bad word to say about the man.

Woolmer became coach of South Africa later that year. In the event, Woolmer turned the country into one of the toughest international teams. At Test level, South Africa were arguably the leading nation behind Australia. In the one-day game, they were ranked number one for several years and would have been strong favourites to win the World Cup final in had they not lost to Australia in the semi-final after an extraordinary run-out in the final over cost them the game.

Woolmer became renowned as one of the game's innovators, one of the first coaches to introduce laptops and computer programs to his players. But, in , he again found himself enmeshed in scandal, this time over match-fixing, when Hansie Cronje - who died in a plane crash - confessed to accepting four bribes from bookmakers. Woolmer had stepped down as coach a year earlier and was not implicated, but he defended Cronje, his great friend, with a vigour that some thought misjudged.

Donald says: 'I have never seen a closer bond between coach and captain as that enjoyed by him and Hansie Cronje. But the Pakistan job, which he took in , tested even Woolmer's love of a challenge. Woolmer was unable to resist the role, accepting it even against the advice of his wife. He told me then that he was sick and tired of all the travelling around. But coaching was what he loved. His study was piled high with cricket manuals. He was always looking to help his players improve. For the last three years of his life, then, Woolmer had one of the most stressful jobs in sport, managing a gifted and ambitious team but one riven by factions, nepotism and conspiracies.

A year before Cronje admitted his crime, two Pakistan players, Salim Malik and Ata-ur-Rehman, had been banned for match-fixing, although Rehman's ban was later revoked and Malik continues to appeal his. The country's President, General Musharraf, is patron of the Pakistan Cricket Board, leading to claims of political influence.

In September , following a ball-tampering row at the Oval Test in which Pakistan refused to take the pitch against England and forfeited the match, the board's chairman Shaharyar Khan, who had hired Woolmer, abruptly resigned. Not long afterwards, two of the team's leading players, Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif, were suspended from playing after tests revealed they had used the banned substance nandrolone.

An appeals committee later overturned their playing bans on the grounds that they had not 'knowingly' taken the drug. Some of Woolmer's problems with his Pakistan team were more personal. The depth of frustrations between the coach and his captain Inzamam-ul-Haq have only recently emerged. Woolmer felt some of the devout Muslims in his team were more interested in praying than playing.

And his own lack of faith perplexed his captain. You are a very good coach and we respect you, but you do not have God. Coaching Pakistan was a brave choice for Woolmer in light of his poor health - he was a diabetic and suffered from high blood pressure.

He also had respiratory problems that he sometimes eased by wearing a breathing mask. And the pressure on the night he died had become intolerable.