Bread and Circuses

Bob Woolmer went down hard, just like the Pakistani cricket team he coached.  The Jamaican hotel room he was found in had blood on the floors.  A bone in his throat was broken.  A police investigator said he suspects more than one man would have been involved to subdue Woolmer.  He was a big man, in cricket and in life.

Cricket exists in parts of the world that don’t know or care about baseball.  In the same way soccer is football to the world, cricket inspires great passion.  And now, violence.

Bob Woolmer coached Pakistan’s team in international competition for five seasons, the last just ended with a surprising loss to Ireland.  Rumors are that among the most surprised were gamblers, who wager enormous sums on cricket’s World Cup in the way Americans bet on March Madness or the Super Bowl.

The police interviewed and finger printed his players one day, got DNA samples the next.   It’s been a bad year for the team, sponsored by President Pervez Musharraf.  Two players were suspending in a doping scandal, then the team forfeited a match to Britain after being accused of doctoring the ball.

Woolmer was well liked in cricket circles both in England (where he had been a star player) and in Pakistan, making his murder all the more surprising.  This is, naturally, big news in Pakistan and wherever cricket is popular.  To put the events in context, it is what it would be like here if Joe Torre was murdered after losing to the Tigers in the playoffs and police were photographed interviewing Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriquez.

Regarded as an honest man, Woolmer had proposed to write a book on cricket, including allegations about gambling and doping.  He was upset recently to discover that galley proofs on a book he was working on (which may or may not have been the one he had discussed) turned up missing.

We assume that however complicated "real life" is, that sports are what they seem to be.  When we watch March Madness we don’t stop to ponder every odd looking pass or missed layup in the context of whether the games are on the level.  

Consider this.  Anywhere sports generates passion it also generates interest, interest gamblers turn into enormous profits.  Every dollar bet on sports is an enducement to change the dynamics of the game, to change outcomes by bribes and threats.  It happened to baseball in the 1919 World Series, it brought down New York City college basketball in the 50’s, and put Pete Rose out of baseball.  In 2004 the NCAA surveyed college basketball players 388 players anonymously and found that 17 had taken money to play poorly in a game.

It’s possible a Pakistani fan (and many were very upset with the loss to Ireland) killed Woolmer, or even that his death is unrelated to his role as coach.  But the death of Woolmer may be another line crossed on the path to gambling putting an even harder grip on sports.  And what happened in Jamaica could easily happen here to a player or coach. 

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