KEY POINTS:
At times you hear words which make you cringe. Yesterday, Chris Dehring, chief executive and managing director of cricket's World Cup, had this to say immediately after Jamaican police had confirmed Bob Woolmer had been murdered:
"It is up to the Jamaica Constabulary Force to get on with its job, while our focus now is on some great cricket to come."
Excuse me?
There is the small matter of murder hanging over the World Cup, but come along, chaps, shoulders up, best foot forward.
To be fair to Dehring, it's hard to imagine his remarks were meant to appear the way they sounded, as though a relatively insignificant event had briefly ruffled the organisation of cricket's big shebang.
Woolmer's death is among the most calamitous events to hit cricket.
Whatever the outcome, both of the inquiry into his murder and the denouement on the field next month, the eighth cup will always be remembered for the wrong reasons.
It will be the year "so-and-so won the cup, but remember Bob Woolmer ..."
This "show must go on" philosophy is not new in times of sports tragedy. When eight of Manchester United's dazzling champions died on an icy Munich runway in February 1958, the city mourned.
But a few days later, a patched-up side of reserves and youth team players went out and beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 - poignantly, the match programme had 11 blank spaces on the United team sheet - and reached the FA Cup final on a tidal wave of emotion.
At the Munich Olympics in 1972, when Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israelis, just about the first utterance after the incident from the International Olympic Committee's autocratic American president Avery Brundage was "the Games must go on". Three tragedies. The same, but vastly different.
Dehring's words sound trite. He could have put it more sensitively. But, bottom line, that's the way sport, and life, is.
* The most curious sight in New Zealand's win over Canada yesterday was team psychologist Gary Hermansson standing on the boundary alongside Michael Mason, presumably offering words of encouragement.
Mason, in his first cup outing, was being pummelled by Canada's Aussie ex-pat John Davison on his way to a blistering 50. Hermansson is a nice guy, formerly a top-class rugby player, and well respected in his profession. But his place is not on the boundary.
Neither is it the team physio Dayle Shackel's job to run about with a microphone taking orders from the coach up in the stand to pass on to the players.
It reeks of a lack of confidence in the captain and the players to do their job; it implies they need constant steering through 50 overs, against Canada for goodness' sake.
Ian Botham, part of the Sky TV team, watched this carry-on for a time. Always one for a decisive view - he reckoned the only thing Andrew Flintoff did wrong on his drunken jaunt in the early hours last weekend was getting caught - His Beefiness then opined that "Mason should turn round, throw him [Hermansson] the ball and tell him to have a bowl".
Rugby's no better. Watch this weekend's Super 14 matches. At a break in play, watch the assorted helpers scurry on to administer water and wisdom from the stand. Again, footballers not being trusted.
Players play, coaches coach, physios train and shrinks study people's heads. They should not mix job descriptions.
* When Herschelle Gibbs joined Garry Sobers and Ravi Shastri as the only smoters of six sixes in an over, a small point was overlooked, which in this particular book ensures the great West Indian stays top of the big boppers.
Gibbs banged 36 off Dutch trundler Daan van Bunge at St Kitts to follow Indian Ravi Shastri, who dealt to Tilak Raj for Bombay against Baroda in 1984-85 - different cricket but let's not quibble - and Sobers.
Here's the point. With Nottinghamshire chasing a declaration against Glamorgan at Swansea in 1968, Sobers lathered left-armer Malcolm Nash six times over the rope, or in one case off up the road towards town.
The first ball of the following over was hit for three by Sobers' partner. Sobers smoked the next one into the crowd, turned and walked off. So, seven from seven for the finest allrounder of the lot.
