In Jamaica, run-hunt by cricketers on the field is on. This is on the screen the world over. Simultaneously, a manhunt by police off the field, to fix murder suspects from among cricketers, is also on. But this is behind the screen. Bob Woolmer's end, first suspected as a death by shock, has turned out to be a shocking murder. And more, Pakistani cricketers, who Bob had coached, and officials of team Pakistan are among the suspects!

Bob, staying in Room No 374 in the 12th floor of the hotel Pegasus, was killed between 8.30 pm on March 17 and 10.45 am on March 18, more likely in the later part of the time-band. It could not be a single man's mission, the Jamaican police guess, as, to subdue a burly Bob, one man' muscle power would not do. The police suspect that Bob knew the culprits. So they are not strangers.

A 24-hour Closed Circuit TV camera operating at the hotel has monitored those who moved in the corridor of the 12th floor. But unfortunately Bob's room was beyond the CCTV camera's focus; so the CCTV footage would not show who entered his room. But still it would show any suspicious movements towards where his room was.

As CCTV recordings show no such movements, the police finger pointed to those who stayed in rooms beyond the reach of the camera in the 12th floor. This is how Pakistani players have come under cloud. The police have questioned important members of the Pakistan contingent.

The fingerprints of the whole contingent and their DNA samples have been taken. But, under pressure from Pakistan officials who arrived at Jamaica, the police had to allow the Pak contingent to leave, but, clearly hinting that that did not mean that they were not suspects.

Yet, the police did not allow two members of the contingent to leave Jamaica. They are claiming to stay back 'on their own' to 'pick up left over items' of the team - a clear alibi. The Jamaican police have openly stated that they are negotiating to get the Pak team return for investigation! According to Pakistani sources, the police know more than what they have chosen to disclose. This is where the investigation stands now.

But more than how, why was Bob killed is important. The killers were obviously not after any costly wrist watch of Bob. Clive Rice, his compatriot, has stunningly disclosed that Bob had contracted with Rice to write a book that would disclose many undisclosed facts about match-fixing.

Rice also says that Bob had mentioned to him the names of officials and cricketers involved in match-fixing. Even as the co-author of Bob's book has denied that the book deals with match-fixing, the former chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board, Shahrayar Khan, has said that, days before his end, Bob was worried about the missing manuscripts of his book!

Was Bob then writing separately for Rice? Was he snuffed out before he named the players and others in the off the field gaming that fixes the players game on the field? There are reports that Bob had had a big tiff with an Indian bookie the day before his end. This recalls the shocking facts the CBI investigation into match-fixing had unearthed in the year 2000.

The Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin and the South African captain, Hansie Cronje, were caught in the bribe chain. The CBI had pointed to the involvement of the world of crime acting through bookies to fix players. The CBI expose was forgotten after Hansie Cronje died in a mysterious air-crash. Rice says that, like Bob, the Hansie too was murdered. But, even before the sad stories of Cronje and Woolmer unfolded, cricket in India had ceased to be a genuine sport.

The media began hyping the players - long before they matured as greats - into icons more popular than cine stars. Even new entrants to the game instantly became icons. And with the advent of consumerist economics, advertisers found in the instant icons a ready-made vehicle to market their products, thus opening the floodgates of money into cricket. These cricket idols began spending their time more as ad icons off the field than as cricketers on the field and at the nets. Result, money, not the game, became the centre of their lives.

Being in their prime youth, not many had the discipline to digest the tsunami of fame and money that swamped them. See the contrast just a generation before. The spinning quartet of India - Prasanna, Bedi, Chandra and Venkat - who tormented the best batsmen of the world, amassed wickets while today's bowlers with a tenth of their talent just amass money! Gavaskars and Viswanaths were the run making machines of India then, but, today's batsmen, most of them miles behind in talent, are just money making machines.

Indian cricketers of today are accustomed to so much luxury and money that, like rich men's children chasing fun, they have little will to strain on the field, an essential quality to fight and win. What a fall for a game that most Indians, transcending differences of religion and caste, region and language, are madly in love with. Cricket, a great game, has produced great heroes ranging from Don Bradman to Frank Worrell and from Sobers to Gavaskar. Not just heroes, they were of exemplary character too.

A high point of this game was reached when the West Indies team led by a Frank Worrell toured Australia in early 1960s. The home team won the series, but Worrell's men won the hearts of Australians. The tour produced the first tie test, described as 'the greatest test of all'. When Worrell's team left Australia, after losing the series 2-1, they were given send-off on the streets of Melbourne with a motorcade and 100,000 people had lined up on both sides.

Heard of a ticker-tape parade farewell for a team that lost; that too for a visiting team of blacks by white hosts when apartheid was still practiced somewhere?

Cricket was no less popular then but it was sans the commerce that vitiates it today. Today it's more commerce and money. Polluted by both, it got prone to gambling first, only to be tainted by crime and blood now.

Courtesy: www.newindpress.com, March 29, 2007