Woolmer got death as a gift?

(Did Bob Woolmer drink death?)

Even after his mortals remains were cremated after going through a disgraceful six weeks of post-death rigmarole, there is no let up in theories as to what killed Bob Woolmer.

The Sunday Times quoted a Jamaican Police source saying that Woolmer consumed poisoned champagne – a rare weedkiller was used as poison-- which he got as a gift.

Police found high level of herbicide in his stomach and also discovered its traces in the glass from which he drank.

“Everything was contaminated. The stomach content, the glass, everything. There was enough to kill him,” the source said.

Woolmer was apparently poisoned before being strangled to death in the Kingston hotel room a day after Ireland knocked Pakistan out of the World Cup

The sleuths are also zeroing on the two champagne bottles, which Woolmer got as a gift. One was emptied and another was found untouched.

The weedkiller is rare and sleuths are not sure if it’s available in Jamaica.

“We think it’s something very unusual, that you can’t even buy in Jamaica. We don’t know what form it was in, whether liquid or crystal. The weedkiller was certainly in the glass. We are not sure whether it was in the bottle. Until we get further results we can’t confirm it,” the source added.

(Photo: AP)

We Are Innocent: 'wanted" Pak fans plead

Two of the three Pakistani fans, who reportedly vanished from the team hotel in Kingston after Bob Woolmer’s murder, have re-appeared to plead innocence.

Both Erfan Chaudhary, a medical technician in New York, and Tariq Malik, a car dealer in Jamaica are shocked after Jamaican Police began searching for them. According to the Police, these two, along with another fan who is still missing, supplied halal meat and transportation to the cricketers.

Chaudhary, however, claimed he was not in Jamaica on that fateful day of March 18 when Woolmer was strangled to death in his hotel room.

"I was really shocked, obviously I had nothing to do with it as I wasn't even there. I went to Jamaica on March 12 for the first match and then I left on the 14th and went back to see the last match against Zimbabwe. On the second trip, I flew to Jamaica on the 20th and left on March 22," he told Mirror.

Malik, on the other hand, said "I didn't kill Bob, far from it. I'm here to help with the investigation, I'm innocent."

Police were still hunting for two other fans named Hamad Malik, thought to be from London, and Jundie Khan, from Florida.

Pakistan’s media manager Pervez Mir admitted he knew Chaudhary and Malik and insisted the two were innocent.

"Jundie Khan and Hamad Malik are not known to myself or any of the players. But Erfan Chaudhary is a close personal friend and I am outraged by the news he is being sought in connection with Bob Woolmer's murder. Tariq is also a very good friend of the team who cooks Halal food for the players," he said.

Meanwhile, the same daily claimed police would conduct a second autopsy on Woolmer's body.

The Woolmer Whodunit

So it was not soaring BP, high blood sugar, depression, suicide or even a heart attack. Jamaican Police finally announced that Bob Woolmer was murdered, strangled to death to be precise.

Death invokes that inevitable grief but murder invites a whole array of emotions and the cricketing world is numbed in shock to know that an evil hand, allegedly of a sub-continent betting mafia, reached right upto Woolmer’s throat to throttle him in his hotel room.

Sarfraz Nawaz, that stormy petrel of Pakistani cricket, must be chuckling on the other side of the Line of Control and why not? When Jamaican Police and its industrious deputy commissioner Mark Shields were trying to convince themselves that it was a ‘suspicious’ case and not a murder one, it was the Pakistani former pacer who saw a betting syndicate behind the murder.

The problem with Sarfraz has been that he sees a potential match-fixer even in the pariah dog that crosses his road in Lahore and it’s hardly a surprise that he is not taken seriously.

Sarfraz claimed Woolmer was about to spill the beans about a betting syndicate in a book which was soon to hit the stand and that cost him his life. And now with Jamaican Police confirming in a statement that the “death was due to asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation”,

But even that theory looks flawed with co-authors and family members saying that the manuscript of 'Discovering Cricket: The Art and Science of the Game' did not even touch on match-fixing.

ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed asserted despite the disturbing developments, the show must go on and the Lord Paul Congdon-led Anti-Corruption Unit would probe if corruption played any role in the murder.

Toxicologist, histologist, Scotland Yard, ICC top brass, Paul Congdon, ACU – and this was supposed to be a cricket World Cup!

Photo Credit: Garfield Robinson/Jamaican Observer