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JAMAICA - Two officers working on the investigation into Bob Woolmer's murder have been put on attachment with international cricket's anti-corruption unit.
The deployment, confirmed yesterday, represents a significant increase in the collaboration between Jamaican police and the body set up seven years ago to stop match fixing.
Both the inquiry team and the International Cricket Council were eager to emphasise that it did not mean the killing was linked to the underworld gambling that is prevalent in the game, especially on the sub-continent.
But it served to heighten speculation, especially when it was disclosed that police want to talk to three Pakistanis who checked out of the Pegasus Hotel, Kingston, shortly after Woolmer was murdered there in his 12th-floor room.
The police said merely that they wished to trace the men to eliminate them from their inquiry.
Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner with the Jamaican constabulary who is leading the murder hunt, fuelled further conjecture by divulging that he had not discounted the possibility that Woolmer had been killed by a professional hitman.
Woolmer, the coach of Pakistan, was found slumped in his room a week last Sunday morning, hours after his team had suffered a shock defeat to Ireland in a World Cup group match.
Three days later, police announced that he had been murdered.
Jeff Rees, the former Metropolitan policeman, who is now head of the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, immediately flew to Jamaica from Barbados where he was due to be based throughout the World Cup.
Rees has steadfastly refused to make any public comment.
There is nothing to suppose any link but as the ICC said, had Rees stayed in Barbados he would have been accused of not doing his job.
The match between Ireland and Pakistan was watched by Ron Hope, one of five permanent regional security officers with the ACSU.
Since the match-rigging scandal of 2000, all international games are watched for evidence of corruption and the real problem lies not with the fixing of results but potentially with the deliberate distortion of events in matches.
Neither the ICC nor the police believe the Pakistan-Ireland game was the object of the attention of match fixers.
Rees and his ACSU colleague Bruce Ewan have made many trips to the Caribbean in the last three years to ensure they had a security structure in place which would make it impossible for bookmakers, gamblers or their associates to influence the World Cup.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has reached a settlement with the Pakistan Cricket Board regarding the ECB's claim for compensation after the forfeiture of the Test between the teams last summer.
Pakistan will waive their right to a fee for a Twenty20 match as part of their tour of England in 2012 to settle the claim.
As part of the revised plan, England's next tour of Pakistan in 2010 will now be postponed to January/February 2012, and will comprise of three Test matches and five one-day internationals.
- INDEPENDENT
