Greed blinds ICC to right choice
By Mark Nicholas
Last Updated: 2:43am BST 26/03/2007
Few people here have heard of Bob Woolmer. Some locals maybe but not the American tourists, of whom there are many. One of them was watching the television news in the hotel lobby and asked where the murder had taken place. I could answer that. Then he asked why, which was harder. After the answer he said that the tournament should be abandoned.
Such an uncomplicated, objective view confirms my own changing belief. Whatever the cost, and it would be astronomical, it is hard to celebrate the game when one of its own people has been killed by it. This is not a case of an outside influence affecting an event; this is an internal affair. Parallels are made with the 1972 Munich Olympics, but to abort then would have been to concede to the terrorists. By not aborting here, we are providing the match-fixers - or any guilty party - with their oxygen, which is the game they target.
It is trite to suggest the show must go on and unlikely that Woolmer would have wanted it to do so. Woolmer’s devotion to cricket is well known. He would have been appalled by the death of one of the game’s own from within and would have understood that unravelling the trail of poison, which has now led to a murder, is a collective responsibility.
Malcolm Speed, chief executive of the International Cricket Council, says: “We must demonstrate that cricket cannot be put off by a criminal cowardly act.” Well, that is just a case of degree. In the case of this “act”, his words are hollow.
Cricket and cricketers live in their own vacuum. Visitors are amazed by the size and breadth of the clique. Sometimes this makes us blind. Already there is a view that the case will be swept beneath the veil of the clique, perhaps even that “murder” will become “accident” in some form or another. Certainly, commentators already feel that a scapegoat will be found elsewhere.
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And yet the rumours are horrific. The Pakistan team were detained in Montego Bay while their DNA was analysed and various “ambiguities” were cleared up. In other words, senior police officers apparently feel the need to rule out the players - none of whom is suspected of any wrongdoing - in regard to Woolmer’s death. If match-fixers are ultimately found guilty, then players inevitably will come under suspicion, for it is they who carry out the deed.
If anyone thought cricket had been cleaned up, they were naive. ICC anti-corruption officers hang around dressing rooms and hotels making their presence known but we live in an age of instant communication through myriad resources. It is as easy to get to a player now as it ever was and because approaches will invariably be made underground, they are more difficult than ever to ascertain or monitor.
The Pakistani players would have backed themselves to beat Ireland and Zimbabwe without bother and to still qualify for the Super Eights. “Throwing” the game against Ireland would make no sense. These days the world watches with a suspicious eye, whether Pakistan likes it or not, and the parallels with the defeat by Bangladesh at Northampton during the 1999 World Cup would have immediately been made. No, to lose deliberately to Ireland would have been too obvious and would attract attention.
We can only guess what Woolmer may have wrestled with during his last few days, but upon deciding to stand down as Pakistan coach after the World Cup some may have assumed that he was troubled by a bad conscience and feared what he would do next. It only needed the wrong person to get wind of this and the plans to silence him would have been put in place.
It still seems most likely that either this conjecture, or the crime of passion as we might call it, or something premeditated has killed Woolmer. Whichever, the game has gone mad. Greg Chappell, the Indian coach, admits that he fears for his life. Pardon? I’m sorry, did we hear that right? The coach of a beaten team thinks he may be a wanted man because a group of under-performing cricketers failed him. And the World Cup goes on?
In the interim report of his 2001 Anti-Corruption paper, Lord Condon said that the game was beset by “silence, apathy, ignorance and fear”. That is as evident now as it was then. Michael Vaughan has alluded to his ongoing doubts; investigations into a recorded telephone conversation between Marlon Samuels, the West Indies No 4 batsman, and a known Indian bookie continue.
It is a cliche to say that the ICC are toothless. Often this is so because, as a deeply political body, they choose to be. The list of unanswered questions is an embarrassment. Corruption, throwing, ball-tampering, doping, cheating and the use of technology, Zimbabwe, Darrell Hair and the Oval Test, are all issues over which the ICC have come to no firm conclusion.
Can they let this be so about murder? Yes, almost certainly, because greed will overrule good sense. Of course, we will be told that the investigation has revealed nothing conclusive as yet and that the game’s response will be determined by its result.
That could be weeks away, and will not be before April 29 if it can possibly be helped. In the meantime each passing day will soften the blow. Then, come the final in Barbados on April 28, the ICC will announce a memorial of some sort to Woolmer and we will all lower our heads out of a bizarre combination of respect and shame. Then the ICC will tell us that the World Cup will forever have Woolmer’s name attached to it. But will that have been enough and will it have changed a damned thing?
