KEY POINTS:
When Bob Woolmer excused himself last Saturday night (local time) to go to bed after the most embarrassing defeat in Pakistan's cricket history, he made little effort to disguise his rapidly growing dissatisfaction with the side he managed.
The former England batsman told reporters at the 17-storey Pegasus Hotel in the centre of the Jamaican capital, Kingston, that the stress of managing some of world cricket's most mercurial talents was taking its toll and he was considering giving up his role as Pakistan's coach.
Speaking hours after Pakistan had lost by three wickets to Ireland in the World Cup, he said: "I would like to sleep on my future as a coach. Coaching is what I do best, therefore I'm not going to throw it away just like that. However, I will give it some thought."
The Independent has been told that Woolmer had in fact already made up his mind and was waiting to tell Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) that he would not be seeking a renewal of his contract after his side played their last match today in the Caribbean.
But it was news that one of the world's most respected cricket coaches would never get to declare publicly himself.
Instead, his sudden death is the subject of a maelstrom of lurid allegations from match-fixing to poisoning that is threatening to overshadow the showpiece festival of one-day international cricket.
Amid the palm trees of the West Indies, there was only one question being asked: Was Woolmer, a familiar figure in the green and yellow uniform, murdered? Some 12 hours after Woolmer bid his colleagues good night, staff at the Pegasus forced their way into his 12thfloor room to find him unconscious on the floor.
He was declared dead an hour later in hospital and doctors told his widow, Gill, they believed he had probably died from a heart attack.
Coming in the wake of the catastrophic defeat on St Patrick's Day to the cricketing minnows of Ireland, which consigned Pakistan to an early exit and sparked riots in Pakistan at which effigies of Woolmer and his players were burnt, the death seemed a stress-induced tragedy.
But all that changed shortly after 10pm on Tuesday when Mark Shields, deputy police commissioner of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, told an impromptu press conference that Woolmer's death was being treated as suspicious.
The island's second most senior officer was recruited from Scotland Yard in 2005 to combat Jamaica's epidemic of gang violence.
Now he finds himself dealing with an inquiry into a world every bit as ruled by fierce loyalties and arcane ritual.
Mr Shields said that initial reports from a pathologist and other medical evidence meant there was "sufficient information to continue a full investigation into the death of Mr Woolmer, which we are now treating as suspicious."
A later attempt by Shields to insist "there is no evidence it's a homicide" did nothing to dampen speculation that Woolmer had been murdered - a theory posited by several media outlets in India and Pakistan since news of the death broke on Sunday.
As a forlorn Pakistan side played its final game of the tournament against Zimbabwe, a team of 10 forensic science officers were combing Woolmer's hotel room amid claims that traces of blood and vomit had been found on the floor and walls.
A blood-sugar testing machine used by Woolmer, who was diabetic, was found on the bathroom floor.
There were further claims that the 58-year-old had scratches on his neck and blood on his cheek inconsistent with a heart attack or diabetic collapse.
The results of toxicology tests, which could provide a conclusive answer to whether there was foul play, were due today.
To add to the febrile atmosphere, the Pakistani team have been asked to stay in the Jamaican capital for at least a further two days after their final game yesterday to allow police to complete any interviews.
The investigation is the latest shock for a Pakistani cricket side that has become inured to scandal in recent month.
Last summer, Woolmer's team became the first in Test history to forfeit a match when the players refused to take to the field against England after a dispute with the Australian umpire Darrell Hair.
The build-up to the World Cup was disrupted by bans imposed on the two star bowlers, Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif, after they tested positive for banned substances.
Both players won appeals against bans from the PCB but then dropped out of the tournament due to injury.
In such circumstances, it was unsurprising that the death of the national coach in a country as cricket-mad as Pakistan - and particularly in the wake of a three-wicket defeat to Ireland that no cricket expert would have dared predict - would give rise to a cacophony of conspiracy theories.
Sarfraz Nawaz, a former Pakistani fast bowler and now a politician, said: "Woolmer's death has some connection with the match-fixing mafia. I've been saying this for the last four days that Woolmer's death is not natural, but it's a murder."
The suggestion would be immediately dismissed as outlandish were it not for the succession of match-fixing scandals over the past decade, in which leading players have been offered large bribes by shadowy bookmakers on the cricket circuit.
In 2001, Lord Condon, the former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, concluded in a report that corruption was endemic within a small but significant number of players in the game and referred to claims of criminal activity, including kidnap and murder, among powerful bookmakers.
A year earlier, the South African captain, Hansie Cronje confessed to his involvement in the largest match-fixing scandal in the sports history.
He admitted taking bribes of up to £150,000 ($416,000) a time to throw games from a man introduced to him by the Indian captain, Mohammed Azharuddin.
Both men were subsequently banned from the sport for life.
Woolmer was South Africa's cricket coach at the time and a close friend of Cronje, although there is no suggestion he knew anything about the bribes.
It emerged yesterday that Woolmer was working on an updated autobiography shortly before his death in which he wanted to give a "warts and all" account of his time in Pakistan, where he spent up to five months a year, as well as previous scandals in cricket.
But in the wider cricket family there was near unanimity that a fresh match-fixing scandal was an extremely unlikely explanation for Woolmer's death.
Pervez Mir, spokesman for the Pakistan Cricket Board, said: "Suspicious can mean anything - it is still inconclusive. We don't really know what the actual reasons are for the cause of death so at this present moment it would be rather premature to say whether it is murder or anything else."
The sport's ruling body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), which set up a specialist anti-corruption unit it the wake of the match-fixing scandals, declined to comment on the death.
But it is understood there are no current investigations into recent Pakistan games.
Woolmer's wife, Gill, who lives in Cape Town, was more categorical.
She said: "I don't see any conspiracy in his death. I am aware that his death is being viewed as a suspicious death.
"He had nothing to do with the match-fixing controversy and any such person being involved is highly unlikely. We never got any threats as far as I know."
Instead, friends and family of the cricketer said that it was Woolmer's growing disillusionment with those running cricket in Pakistan and the extreme stress of his situation that was weighing most heavily on his mind in recent months.
Woolmer's son Russell said: "There was a lot of stress in his job and it may have been stress that caused it. We're all very shocked and we don't know what to do."
Woolmer, a father of two children, admitted that he found the all-consuming passion of cricket fans in Pakistan, where street protests after any defeat for the national side are a commonplace, at times overwhelming.
That was made clear when defeat to Ireland on Sunday - described as the cricketing equivalent of San Marino thrashing England in football's World Cup - provoked demonstration in the central city of Multan where effigies of Woolmer and the captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, were burnt.
In Hyderabad, protesters staged a mock burial of the Pakistan team and the chairman of the PCB, Naseem Ashraf, who has since tendered his resignation to the chief patron of the board, Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan.
In an interview last year, Woolmer said: "[Pakistanis] have a very critical culture and some of the criticism the players get is too harsh. The country has grown a critical culture but they should grow out of it."
Nonetheless, as national coach for three years - no mean achievement in the face of such a demanding public - Woolmer seems to have relished his job, building up a youth system in Lahore that has won plaudits from even his harshest critics.
Woolmer was born into the game to which he devoted his life.
His father, a businessman, was a leading amateur player and the hospital where he was born in Kanpur, India, stood opposite the town's cricket ground.
He made his England Test debut in 1975 and was feted as a hero in the second match of a series against Australia when he staved off defeat with an innings lasting eight and a half hours.
His score of 149 was his highest in Test cricket.
His international cricket career was, in effect, ended in 1981 when he joined the rebel tour to South Africa, earning him a three-year ban.
He then began a 23-year coaching career, emigrating in 1984 to South Africa, where he eschewed an all-white club to work with a mixed-race team during apartheid.
- INDEPENDENT
