T
he International Cricket Council is hoping against hope that Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer's murder is not linked with match-fixing. With hundreds of potential witnesses, it can take several months of painstaking effort to piece together a complicated murder case. Match-fixing is, however, emerging as the biggest angle that Jamaican Police may end up pursuing.The involvement of the ICC Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ASCU) in the investigation lent credence to the assumption that Woolmer's killing is linked to match-fixing. But then, ACSU chief Jeff Rees and his colleague Bruce Ewan could be participating in the investigation to find out if they were wrong in not safeguarding the World Cup from the baleful influence of match-fixers. Deep down, Rees will be interested in finding out if it was a Pakistan-based bookmaker, an associate of Dawood Ibrahim, who killed Woolmer. British tabloid The Sun suggested Woolmer threw a bookie out of his hotel room earlier that week. "This issue has come up before but we have so far been unable to substantiate it," deputy commissioner of police Mark Shields said. "But we are prepared to consider it further now that we have names and more details."
Shields announced that about 28 hours of CCTV footage from two cameras at the hotel corridor opening into Woolmer's room had now been digitally enhanced. "The good quality of the CCTV images is a huge breakthrough in the murder investigation and could prove crucial," he said, taking care to point out that nobody was yet a suspect.
Pakistan Cricket Board has suggested that the police may have erroneously declared Woolmer's death as murder. But Shields says he has enough evidence, most of which he's not made public yet, that point very clearly to murder. "I think that we should stick with people who were involved in the post mortem, the pathologist, and he has actually released a statement or a report which has given a cause of death," he said. "And that is quite clear and that's why we're treating this as a murder investigation."
In fact, Shields has had a busy time denying speculation. Earlier, he was terming as 'pretty inaccurate' the Pakistan team spokesman's claim that the team had been cleared of murder and that no one in the side was a suspect. Lately, he'd to correct the impression that a second post mortem had been ordered on Woolmer's body. "Any day that there's no new development, something is made up to keep the media happy," he said. "The reality is that we have a cause of death and we have an investigation to a murder. We have not managed to eliminate anybody. Everybody at the moment is a witness, but we don't suspect any one person more than another. Murder is not solved in 45 minutes like it is on TV. In reality it's not like that."
Former South African captain Clive Rice may have fanned the flames by saying Woolmer could have been killed because he knew too much. "We were actually involved in a match in England at the time and Bob and I discussed it. He told me a lot that never came out. I'm not just talking about other players being involved, but officials too," Rice said. He thinks Woolmer was killed before he could blow the whistle on what went on in Pakistan's shock World Cup defeat by Ireland.
Meanwhile, a distraught Gill Woolmer and her sons await Bob's body so that he can be given a burial.