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March 22 - The 2007 cricket world cup may well be remembered as the biggest sporting scandal of all time with match-fixing, murder, and bookie crime syndicates the essential ingredients. It now appears as though Pakistan's coach, Bob Woolmer, was murdered in his hotel room after his team lost against Ireland.
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This is the same Bob Woolmer who was the coach of South Africa when Hansie Cronje was captain - you remember those happy times don't you? South Africa was involved in match fixing, Asian bookmaking syndicates were paying Cronje, who later died in a suspicious airplane crash.
There has been a lot of media coverage surrounding Woolmer's tragic death, but no one is emphasising this conenction to a prior betting scandal, which seems rather crucial since he died after bookmakers raked in millions following his team's shock loss.
This is the stuff of crime novels and it's happening right now in Jamaica. Pakistan were huge betting favorites to beat Ireland. The chances of the part-time playing Irish to defeat a powerhouse like Pakistan, who fielded their best team and needed to win to avoid World Cup elimination, were close to nil.
But Ireland beat Pakistan in a result that reeked of tampering. Pakistan's cricketers are frequently accused of this sort of thing with millions of dollars riding on each game thanks to feverish betting on the sub-continent.
Was Woolmer involved in the fix? Or was he about to speak out, as some believe, to expose match fixing in a book he was supposedly writing? He had been at the center of it all, so either scenario is certainly possible.
Alone in his hotel room, Woolmer was discovered in the bathroom with a fractured bone in his neck. He was lying in a pool of blood and vomit, and while the initial reports were that he had suffered a heart attack it now seems quite clear that it was a murder, and the police are treating it as a "suspicious" death.
This is the biggest story in sports, and we'll keep you updated on any breaking news. Cricket has long been tainted by an obvious association with mafia-style betting rings: Australia's top cricketers were involved (Mark Waugh, Shane Warne, and others), as were Pakistan's and South Africa's.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the connection here: Pakistan loses to Ireland in one of the biggest betting upsets of all time. The next day their team coach is found dead with a broken neck. Hmm, it's just not cricket is it?
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