Sitting in Karachi, surrounded by cricket buffs, my ignorance about the sport often makes me feel a little awkward. But I have to admit that Bob Woolmer’s death has suddenly got me curious about the sport. Given how regularly illegal things happen over here and get passed off as normal (or ignored), my first assumption when I heard about the death on Geo News was that someone was behind it, rather than it being something that just happened naturally.

Now, to be honest, that kind of cynical thinking isn’t something that I’m exclusively prone to. We’re a nation of doubters who are suckers for conspiracy theories, because there’s so much more here, than elsewhere, that isn’t on the level.

To read that his death is being stated as caused by strangulation doesn’t at all seem to surprise me in the “Oh my God” sense, but more in the, “Aha, I was right!” way!

You just have to figure that some overzealous fan or player decided that it was the coach’s fault that the team played like shit and lost twice in two matches. There’s even talk of match-fixing (again) being involved. I can hear the speech right now, “Let’s lose to the Irish today guys, because it’ll be fun to make all those gamblers drop a bunch of money.”