The Hindu (Peter Roebuck writes) 24/03/07

Bob Woolmer case: It’s just not cricket

How did it come to this? How did we allow a game to become a murder scene? A respected son has been cold-bloodedly killed in the middle of the game’s most prestigious event. Until these last few days it could hardly be imagined that any game could suffer such a loss. It is only a game.

A bloke armed with a hunk of leather tries to hit three sticks protected by another fellow bearing a lump of wood. How can anyone care so much? How can wrath or vengeance or hatred so erode a man’s better feelings that he kills because a match has been lost? Murders a man was not even playing? Endangers his own life to exact revenge?

At once it is a tragedy and an absurdity. A man steeped in the game has been taken before his work had been completed. A father has been denied his period of reflection. A wife must embark upon her twilight years without her companion. A family has been rent asunder. No one wanted to believe it.

No one thought it possible that the greed, the frenzy, the hysteria, the nationalism had so far escaped the containment of reason as to provoke such destruction. No-one wanted to believe that the madmen were serious.

Alas, the unavoidable revelation of our times is that civilization eludes us. Man’s inhumanity to man continues apace. Savagery stalks the streets of Baghdad and Harare. It is something to take a man’s life yet it happens every day and hardly raises a blink. Manners die in the gutter, their moans unheard.

Remain immune

Sport could not hope to remain immune. At times it has become as squalid as any political dogfight. Cricket has been as reluctant as any other recreation to confront its shadows. Recently a national captain was threatened by senior cricketing officials.

And what unfolded? Tatenda Taibu fled his home, left his country. Meanwhile the culprits retained office, filling their pockets with foreign currency, fattened apologists for the evil that has fed them.

Speculations abound

Inevitably speculation is rife about this latest outrage. Was it a criminal of the streets, a chancer seeking loot? Kingston is full of them but it is unlikely. Easier targets present themselves. Bookies? Woolmer knew a thing or two but was not the type to spill beans.

Moreover bookies prefer to work in the darkness. Murdering someone within a stone’s throw of the world’s media cannot be good for business. The timing of the death cannot be coincidental. Had pride been hurt? Pockets emptied? Passions aroused? Regardless, cricket needs to take a look at itself. Money has become its god. Indian players are at the beck and call of sponsors when they want to be in the nets. Drugs, cheating, gambling fester not far from the surface.

Off the field, frenzy has replaced calm and informed debate. Inevitably supporters lose their heads. Victories and defeats are no longer part and parcel of a fascinating game. Someone is to blame. Someone must pay the penalty.

To concentrate on these excesses is to distort the picture. But cricket does need to find a new sincerity. Woolmer’s untimely passing means the game must stop pretending that is permissible to throw stones, place bets, burn cars, barrack visitors, curse opponents, stare at umpires and pretend that leather-flingers and willow-wielders can be something more than collectors or runs and takers of wickets. It is time to start laughing again. But it might take awhile. A man has to be buried. A game has to emerge from the grave it has dug.