SirRobertAnderson
04-03-2007, 06:24 PM
A snippet from this Wall Street Journal piece caught my eye.
I can't profess to know much about cricket other than its similarities to baseball. Anyone have any idea why the suicide rate for the sport would be high ?
Dazed, the World Cup continues, in mind, body but not spirit. Cricket goes on, for it is no virgin to scandal and darkness. Cricketers have murdered and been murdered. Historian David Frith notes that the suicide rate among cricketers is disproportionately high (at last count he had documented over 150 cases).
A Cricket Legend's Strange, Sudden Exit
By OSMAN SAMIUDDIN
March 29, 2007; Page D9
That cricket finds itself on these pages is warning enough that something big, and probably unpleasant, has happened to it. You're not wrong, for last week on March 18, in room 374 of Jamaica's Pegasus Hotel, a maid came upon not only the lifeless body of Bob Woolmer, the English coach of Pakistan, but possibly cricket's JFK moment. Within days, police announced he had been murdered. Where were you?
It's some tale and here is some trivia. His death occurred five days into cricket's showpiece, the World Cup. It came barely a day after one of the sport's greatest upsets: Debutante Ireland, as synonymous with cricket as Enron is with credibility and composed of postmen and teachers who play cricket part-time, beat Woolmer's team, traditional powerhouse and 1992 world champion Pakistan. It was America's 1980 miracle on ice, Buster busting Tyson and Argentina beating the Dream Team at the 2004 Olympiad all in one. And on St. Patrick's Day.
Murder is no way to go, but a loss to Ireland spoke poorly as the last act of a man considered one of cricket's genuine radicals; if there is a left-field in this often straight-laced game, then Woolmer was an inhabitant. In the mid-1990s, he evolved the once nonexistent, then peripheral role of the coach while in charge of South Africa, hinting to cricket that it too could contain a Vince Lombardi or a Phil Jackson, off-field men intrinsic to their team's on-field success.
[Bob Woolmer]
Entire matches were recorded, analyzed, laptops used as often as sports scientists. Innovative training drills were constructed, though often it was said that Woolmer went too far, as when he tried to communicate with his team during play via an earpiece. But South Africa was successful and Woolmer was feted, having nudged cricket into modernity.
When he came to Pakistan, in June 2004, Woolmer's peak was past though the prospect was delicious: one of cricket's more orderly, scientific minds working with the sport's confirmed schizoid team, champions one day, clowns the next. For a while, through 2005, the matchup worked as Woolmer helped galvanize the players and Pakistan bubbled with a series of heady triumphs.
But the last seven months of Woolmer's tenure were maddening, his team lurching from crisis to controversy, slipping from grace so speedily that Britney Spears might have shivered. Pakistan became the first international team in 129 years to forfeit a test match. Two leading players tested positive for steroids, got banned and were subsequently exonerated.
Results suffered, tensions rose. One of the last images of Woolmer before the World Cup was the coach's televised spat with his own leading star Shoaib Akhtar, cricket's Denis Rodman for showmanship and drama but not the cross-dressing. A despairing crescendo built up until all the madness, the drama, the tragedy gushed out in the Caribbean, the curse of the Irish capping off Pakistan's worst campaign, Woolmer's death further blackening it.
Hectic schedules prevented Woolmer from spending enough time in Pakistan to be loved or hated there. Had they known the genial, worldly raconteur of cricket tales, his evangelical zeal for the game, his approachable manner and keen eye for cultural traits (he often muttered inshallah, or God willing, in times of uncertainty, as Pakistanis are prone to do), their attachment to him might have been stronger. Instead, he was respected when times were good, but a surplus foreigner when bad.
Initially, after Pakistan's loss to Ireland, fans vented in time-honored fashion. Players' effigies were burnt and chants called for players' -- and Woolmer's -- heads. Barely had the anger been exorcised when news of his death filtered through. Immediately anger became guilty grieving and Woolmer was transformed into a martyr of sorts, who had taken the loss so to his heart that he died as a result. Duly, he was conferred a lofty civilian honor by the president.
When it emerged after two autopsies that murder was the case, anxiety took over. Drawing rooms, sidewalks, schools, streets, television and teashops became dens for gossip and speculation about a crime miles, continents and oceans away. Pakistan became a nation of amateur sleuths and armchair critics: Many wondered whether the Pakistan players were suspects, as did the international media. Why fingerprint them? Was it really murder? Why did it take Pakistan four days to send help to the players, and of the diplomatic rather than legal kind? Was Woolmer's murder connected to match-fixing -- the practice of fixing performances or games by players with illegal bookies in tow -- which so blighted cricket in the late 1990s?
Big banks and bigger soft drinks canned their cricket-based campaigns. The team was poor, Woolmer's demise morbid and cricket offered no happy vibe. Gradually, as the investigations dragged, headlines lessened every passing day. Normality and anger returned. When the players finally arrived back in Pakistan, over a week after Woolmer's death, fans taunted them, caring little that they were deeply traumatized after losing someone close. The luckier players slipped away at the airport through back exits.
Dazed, the World Cup continues, in mind, body but not spirit. Cricket goes on, for it is no virgin to scandal and darkness. Cricketers have murdered and been murdered. Historian David Frith notes that the suicide rate among cricketers is disproportionately high (at last count he had documented over 150 cases).
Drugs, recreational or performance-enhancing, have reared their heads periodically over two decades, on-field confrontations are not scarce, players have attacked fans and political crises are never far. Match-fixing, to which Woolmer's murder is persistently but not definitively linked, shook the game to its very core. The last time cricket was a gentleman's game was when men wore top hats.
Yet has there been anything quite like this, as sudden, as macabre and with as great an immediate impact beyond cricket, maybe even sports? The murder of a high-profile coach of a high-profile team after a high-profile loss during the sport's highest-profile tournament? Still the mind boggles.
Cricket's fraternity says too often, in cases of gamesmanship, a breach of spirit or mass scandal, that it's just not cricket. It's been said this past week too -- though, truth be told, never has that phrase seemed so inadequate.
Mr. Samiuddin is Pakistan editor of Cricinfo.com1.
I can't profess to know much about cricket other than its similarities to baseball. Anyone have any idea why the suicide rate for the sport would be high ?
Dazed, the World Cup continues, in mind, body but not spirit. Cricket goes on, for it is no virgin to scandal and darkness. Cricketers have murdered and been murdered. Historian David Frith notes that the suicide rate among cricketers is disproportionately high (at last count he had documented over 150 cases).
A Cricket Legend's Strange, Sudden Exit
By OSMAN SAMIUDDIN
March 29, 2007; Page D9
That cricket finds itself on these pages is warning enough that something big, and probably unpleasant, has happened to it. You're not wrong, for last week on March 18, in room 374 of Jamaica's Pegasus Hotel, a maid came upon not only the lifeless body of Bob Woolmer, the English coach of Pakistan, but possibly cricket's JFK moment. Within days, police announced he had been murdered. Where were you?
It's some tale and here is some trivia. His death occurred five days into cricket's showpiece, the World Cup. It came barely a day after one of the sport's greatest upsets: Debutante Ireland, as synonymous with cricket as Enron is with credibility and composed of postmen and teachers who play cricket part-time, beat Woolmer's team, traditional powerhouse and 1992 world champion Pakistan. It was America's 1980 miracle on ice, Buster busting Tyson and Argentina beating the Dream Team at the 2004 Olympiad all in one. And on St. Patrick's Day.
Murder is no way to go, but a loss to Ireland spoke poorly as the last act of a man considered one of cricket's genuine radicals; if there is a left-field in this often straight-laced game, then Woolmer was an inhabitant. In the mid-1990s, he evolved the once nonexistent, then peripheral role of the coach while in charge of South Africa, hinting to cricket that it too could contain a Vince Lombardi or a Phil Jackson, off-field men intrinsic to their team's on-field success.
[Bob Woolmer]
Entire matches were recorded, analyzed, laptops used as often as sports scientists. Innovative training drills were constructed, though often it was said that Woolmer went too far, as when he tried to communicate with his team during play via an earpiece. But South Africa was successful and Woolmer was feted, having nudged cricket into modernity.
When he came to Pakistan, in June 2004, Woolmer's peak was past though the prospect was delicious: one of cricket's more orderly, scientific minds working with the sport's confirmed schizoid team, champions one day, clowns the next. For a while, through 2005, the matchup worked as Woolmer helped galvanize the players and Pakistan bubbled with a series of heady triumphs.
But the last seven months of Woolmer's tenure were maddening, his team lurching from crisis to controversy, slipping from grace so speedily that Britney Spears might have shivered. Pakistan became the first international team in 129 years to forfeit a test match. Two leading players tested positive for steroids, got banned and were subsequently exonerated.
Results suffered, tensions rose. One of the last images of Woolmer before the World Cup was the coach's televised spat with his own leading star Shoaib Akhtar, cricket's Denis Rodman for showmanship and drama but not the cross-dressing. A despairing crescendo built up until all the madness, the drama, the tragedy gushed out in the Caribbean, the curse of the Irish capping off Pakistan's worst campaign, Woolmer's death further blackening it.
Hectic schedules prevented Woolmer from spending enough time in Pakistan to be loved or hated there. Had they known the genial, worldly raconteur of cricket tales, his evangelical zeal for the game, his approachable manner and keen eye for cultural traits (he often muttered inshallah, or God willing, in times of uncertainty, as Pakistanis are prone to do), their attachment to him might have been stronger. Instead, he was respected when times were good, but a surplus foreigner when bad.
Initially, after Pakistan's loss to Ireland, fans vented in time-honored fashion. Players' effigies were burnt and chants called for players' -- and Woolmer's -- heads. Barely had the anger been exorcised when news of his death filtered through. Immediately anger became guilty grieving and Woolmer was transformed into a martyr of sorts, who had taken the loss so to his heart that he died as a result. Duly, he was conferred a lofty civilian honor by the president.
When it emerged after two autopsies that murder was the case, anxiety took over. Drawing rooms, sidewalks, schools, streets, television and teashops became dens for gossip and speculation about a crime miles, continents and oceans away. Pakistan became a nation of amateur sleuths and armchair critics: Many wondered whether the Pakistan players were suspects, as did the international media. Why fingerprint them? Was it really murder? Why did it take Pakistan four days to send help to the players, and of the diplomatic rather than legal kind? Was Woolmer's murder connected to match-fixing -- the practice of fixing performances or games by players with illegal bookies in tow -- which so blighted cricket in the late 1990s?
Big banks and bigger soft drinks canned their cricket-based campaigns. The team was poor, Woolmer's demise morbid and cricket offered no happy vibe. Gradually, as the investigations dragged, headlines lessened every passing day. Normality and anger returned. When the players finally arrived back in Pakistan, over a week after Woolmer's death, fans taunted them, caring little that they were deeply traumatized after losing someone close. The luckier players slipped away at the airport through back exits.
Dazed, the World Cup continues, in mind, body but not spirit. Cricket goes on, for it is no virgin to scandal and darkness. Cricketers have murdered and been murdered. Historian David Frith notes that the suicide rate among cricketers is disproportionately high (at last count he had documented over 150 cases).
Drugs, recreational or performance-enhancing, have reared their heads periodically over two decades, on-field confrontations are not scarce, players have attacked fans and political crises are never far. Match-fixing, to which Woolmer's murder is persistently but not definitively linked, shook the game to its very core. The last time cricket was a gentleman's game was when men wore top hats.
Yet has there been anything quite like this, as sudden, as macabre and with as great an immediate impact beyond cricket, maybe even sports? The murder of a high-profile coach of a high-profile team after a high-profile loss during the sport's highest-profile tournament? Still the mind boggles.
Cricket's fraternity says too often, in cases of gamesmanship, a breach of spirit or mass scandal, that it's just not cricket. It's been said this past week too -- though, truth be told, never has that phrase seemed so inadequate.
Mr. Samiuddin is Pakistan editor of Cricinfo.com1.