spinoff

In a flash, the death of Mr Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistan Cricket team was blamed on elements within the Pakistan team itself. Former Pakistan players and those associated with the current team were passing through London on their way back home from the Caribbean and last night’s television news carried interviews with members of the Pakistan entourage. But how unfairly these men were treated.

 

Almost all of the interviews held – most egregiously that which appeared on BBC’s Newsnight – made an unacceptable assumption, and it was this: that Mr. Woolmer’s death was due to match fixing; that match fixing is impossible without the assistance of the team; and that the Pakistan team was therefore complicit in Mr. Woolmer’s death. This is nonsense.

 

The first assumption is that Bob Woolmer was writing a book in which he was planning to reveal highly-damaging secrets about match fixing in the Pakistan game. For this, he was killed. This rumour was thrown at last night’s interviewees who dismissed it unreservedly.

 

But this rumour is exactly that – a rumour. It also happens to be a false one. The book’s co-author has repeatedly stated that the Woolmer book was intended to be a technical manual – nothing further. But this has not stopped the rumour mill. The next phase of the rumour is that those involved in match fixing thought that Woolmer was going to reveal them to the authorities, and that suspicion alone was reason enough to target Woolmer, and kill him.

 

But consider this question – if Pakistani gangsters wished to murder Bob Woolmer, coach of Pakistan, then where would they chose to carry out that plan? Would they do so when he was in Pakistan? Or would they wait until he was at one of the most televised and high-profile sporting competitions on the planet, surrounded by security employees, staying in a heavily guarded hotel on the same high security floor as Brian Lara, the West Indies Captain (a special pass is required even to access that floor), in a hotel full of closed circuit television cameras?

 

Furthermore, the Caribbean is a notoriously difficult place to visit for the greater part of the world’s nations. There are regular direct flights between northern Europe, the United States and the Caribbean because those regions are home to such a great proportion of the Caribbean diaspora. Not so Pakistan.

 

So not only is the Caribbean exceptionally dangerous and ill-suited to the type of international assassination implied by last night’s pundits, it is also incredibly difficult to access from South Asia. It is grossly improbable that a book-making syndicate would send a killer on a journey that involved having to change planes in terrorism-obsessed London.

 

There are many more probable reasons for Mr Woolmer’s death than that an international conspiracy of book-makers wanted to silence him for fear of exposure. Which is not to say that Pakistan – and India also – does not have a grievous problem with book-making and sports.

 

There is no question that illegal bookmakers have attempted to fix matches and worm their way into the fabric of South Asian cricket. And the most fundamental reason that such a problem exists is a very simple one – gambling is illegal in both Pakistan and India. What better way can one imagine to line the pockets of sub-continental gangsters? What better way to cement the relationship between a sport and the criminal underground? Those governments must review their domestic policies.

 

There is gangsterism, and there are compromised players in the Pakistan game, just as there are compromised players in the Indian, Sri Lankan, South African, Australian and English games. But no Pakistan player or betting syndicate has had anything to do with Mr Woolmer’s death.

 

Yours etc.,

 

Spinoff.