Friday, March 23, 2007
Cricketer Woolmer allegedly murdered by Dawood Ibrahim
But then, they always say 'Ibrahim done it'. Jamaican police declared Woolmer was murdered and confirmed they would investigate whether he was killed to stop him exposing match-fixing. Apparently Woolmer was born in Kanpur, India, so he may have understood Asia.
As Bob Woolmer sat in the dressing room watching his Pakistan side painfully extinguished from the Cricket World Cup last weekend, a disturbing chant echoed from outside. "Death to Woolmer ... death to Pakistan," angry Pakistan spectators shouted. There are definitely possibilities there. But that was, after all, only what Fox News said and they might have made it up.
On Thursday, a notorious gangster, Babloo Srivasetava, brazenly told Indian television that the country's most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, may be behind the murder.
"The Pakistan-Ireland match must have been fixed," Srivasetava said while being taken to court in the north-west city of Lucknow for an unrelated murder case. "The D-Company [Ibrahim's gang] may have lots of money at stake. Woolmer may have got an inkling of the fixing and hence he was killed." In normal times, this would have been scoffed at as an an underworld figure trying to get even with a rival. But these are not normal times and Ibrahim, wanted for the 1993 Mumbai bombings which killed more than 250 people, has long been suspected of being the match-fixing kingpin.
IMO: AFAIK gambling on cricket matches is illegal everywhere in India and Pakistan, so by nature such gambling is connected with organised crime in those countries and there is also a lot of high spirits over games. In all fairness it would seem just if a person whose background was mainly English, like Bob's, was one of the first victims of lethal cricket violence as the English invented 'cricket violence' in recent years as well as body line bowling (now outlawed) much earlier, where the bowler bowls to hit the batsman and not the wicket. Seems a pity though, as Woolmer was just about to retire peacefully to South Africa. Whatever the facts, it seems likely that like Larwood, Woolmer was 'acting under orders'.
As Bob Woolmer sat in the dressing room watching his Pakistan side painfully extinguished from the Cricket World Cup last weekend, a disturbing chant echoed from outside. "Death to Woolmer ... death to Pakistan," angry Pakistan spectators shouted. There are definitely possibilities there. But that was, after all, only what Fox News said and they might have made it up.
On Thursday, a notorious gangster, Babloo Srivasetava, brazenly told Indian television that the country's most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, may be behind the murder.
"The Pakistan-Ireland match must have been fixed," Srivasetava said while being taken to court in the north-west city of Lucknow for an unrelated murder case. "The D-Company [Ibrahim's gang] may have lots of money at stake. Woolmer may have got an inkling of the fixing and hence he was killed." In normal times, this would have been scoffed at as an an underworld figure trying to get even with a rival. But these are not normal times and Ibrahim, wanted for the 1993 Mumbai bombings which killed more than 250 people, has long been suspected of being the match-fixing kingpin.
IMO: AFAIK gambling on cricket matches is illegal everywhere in India and Pakistan, so by nature such gambling is connected with organised crime in those countries and there is also a lot of high spirits over games. In all fairness it would seem just if a person whose background was mainly English, like Bob's, was one of the first victims of lethal cricket violence as the English invented 'cricket violence' in recent years as well as body line bowling (now outlawed) much earlier, where the bowler bowls to hit the batsman and not the wicket. Seems a pity though, as Woolmer was just about to retire peacefully to South Africa. Whatever the facts, it seems likely that like Larwood, Woolmer was 'acting under orders'.
# posted by uv : 9:56 AM
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