Word: cricketed
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...official song for the Cricket World Cup currently under way in the Caribbean is titled "The Game of Love and Unity." But with Thursday's announcement that Jamaican police are now treating the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer as a murder case, the kitschy marketing jingle has taken on a note of brutal irony. How could the noble, gentle game of cricket lead to murder? Who would want to kill a coach respected and adored by players and fans from Cape Town to Karachi? What happened to all that love and unity...
...truth, as any follower of the game will tell you, is that cricket is neither gentle nor even that noble these days. Over the past decade international cricket has been shaken by a series of scandals - match fixing, doping, illegal bowling actions (a cricket ball must be delivered with a straight arm; a bent elbow as in baseball's pitching action is impermissible) - that have sandpapered away much of the honor and decency that the game once embodied...
...Unsurprisingly, money has played a big part in the change. The game is now worth billions of dollars in advertising and television rights, especially in South Asia where cricket stars have become spokesmen for everything from sports shoes to banks. Money in sport isn't a bad thing; the more serious damage has been done by the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on illegal betting on cricket matches. Ahead of Friday's game between India and Sri Lanka, for instance, one Indian newspaper reports that bookmakers in Dubai alone have taken in some $23 million. All that money creates...
...Despite claims by the International Cricket Council that it has eradicated match-fixing, suspicions persist that the practice continues. After Cronje died in a small plane crash in South Africa in 2002, some people saw the hand of South Asian organized crime at work. Former Pakistan fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz alleged to reporters earlier this week that one of South Asia's bookmaking mafia rings is probably behind Woolmer's murder. Sarfraz claims bookies were manipulating results, and that five members of the Pakistani squad were involved. The team's spokesman, Pervez Mir, angrily dismissed Sarfraz's allegations, telling...
...quite possible that Woolmer's death, caused according to the pathologist "due to asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation," is completely unrelated to cricket. Jamaica has one of the highest rates of murder in the world. But the hotel the team was staying in was well protected, and Jamaican police say there was no sign of forced entry. They have fingerprinted and questioned Pakistan's players and support staff, as well as hotel staff, and are studying videotapes from the hotel's security cameras. The tragedy of this incredible tale is not only that Woolmer is dead, but that...