Pakistan cricket coach strangled By HOWARD CAMPBELL, Associated Press Writer KINGSTON, Jamaica - Pakistan's cricket coach Bob Woolmer was strangled to death in his hotel room after the team's shocking World Cup loss to Ireland, Jamaican police said Thursday. Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas said in a statement that the pathologist report found that Woolmer's death was due to "asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation." The statement, which was read by a police spokesman at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel where Woolmer died on Sunday, said police were now treating the case as a murder investigation. "There is an ongoing murder investigation into the death of Robert Woolmer and as a result the security arrangements at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel are a part of those investigations," Owen Ellington, assistant commissioner of police, said in a statement also read by a police spokesman. Woolmer, 58, was found unconscious in his blood- and vomit-splattered hotel room in Jamaica on Sunday, a day after his team's upset loss to Ireland on St. Patrick's Day sealed Pakistan's ouster from the tournament. He was later declared dead at a hospital. Pakistan cricketers were fingerprinted and interviewed on Thursday by police investigating Woolmer's death. They were allowed to leave the hotel in the afternoon and travel to Montego Bay. You reckon somebody lost a bet? (Not to make light of anybody's death [Sorry Lord, please forgive me]) But damn, what does that say about Pakistani cricket fans? I can't recall a single member of a losing team of the world series, super bowl, whatever being murdered, WTF? (Although Bill Buckner and Scott Norwood may have deserved it.)
Yeah, thats a turnup. The pakis take their cricket pretty seriously, for sure-a second religion if you like, but this is unheard of. Money would have to be in their somewhere, the odds on ireland must have been staggering. Tragic, its just not cricket.