Pakistan 'kept in the dark' on coach's murder by AFP

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Event:

ICC World Cup 2006/07

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DateLine: 26th March 2007

 

The Pakistan cricket team is being "kept in the dark" by Jamaican police over the murder of coach Bob Woolmer, their spokesman insisted Monday.

 

Pervez Mir said the "visibly disturbed" players were not being given enough information on the investigation into a killing which has sent shockwaves well beyond the world of cricket.

 

The Pakistan team are on a stopover rest period in London en route home, rocked by being knocked out of the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean at the first hurdle and the murder of former England international Woolmer, who was strangled in his room on March 18.

 

"We assisted in whatever way they (the Jamaican police) wanted, but we need an official statement from their office to notify us officially as to what were the causes of Mr Woolmer's death," Mir told reporters outside the team's hotel near London Heathrow Airport.

 

"We heard on television that he was murdered, but we've not been officially told and we need to know the reasons for his death."

 

He insisted that the Pakistan team remained ready to assist Mark Shields, Jamaica's deputy commissioner of police, who is leading the investigation in Kingston.

 

Mir said he left a message late Sunday on Shields' telephone "because my chairman wants to know, my board wants to know, what's going on as far as the investigation is concerned and what the Jamaican police are doing to catch the killers of Mr Woolmer."

 

Persistent rumours of match-fixing in connection with Woolmer's strangling have cast a dark shadow over cricket and its four-yearly World Cup.

 

Minnows Ireland beat former champions Pakistan by three wickets in the Group D match on March 17 and Shields has said that the betting odds given beforehand on the shock result would be probed.

 

Mir said: "When a man has been murdered, to divert a murder inquiry into a match-fixing inquiry, that's not fair, because we have to find the killers, then we will know what's happened.

 

"To bring up the murky world of match-fixing, I think it's not the right thing and not the right time."

 

Mir also attacked media suggestions of a strained relationship between Woolmer and Pakistan captain Inzamam ul-Haq.

 

After they were fingerprinted, DNA-tested and questioned by police, Shields gave the players the green light to leave Jamaica. They flew out on Saturday and are due to fly from London to Pakistan on Tuesday.

 

Mir said the players were looking forward to getting home "after the traumatic experience they have seen in Jamaica and the loss of their coach.

 

"They are all visibly disturbed, and some of the players have broken down.

 

"The loss of such a good man, a person who has done so much for the game of cricket, is a great loss."

(Article: Copyright © 2007 AFP)