*Condolences to Bob Woolmer

HI this is about and is dedicated to Robert Andrew Woolmer, known as Bob Woolmer, despite being one of my country’s biggest cricketting rival’s(Pakistan’s) coach had always impressed me. He was born in Kanpur, India, within an year of our independence. His first ODI debut was for England in 1972. His website reads that his debut to test cricket was marred by his broken hand.

Under his regime, South Africa won 10 out of Test series, which is awesome. He left his job as SA’s coach after they fail to make to the final of the World Cup. He again gets appointed as the coach of Pakistan He was only the second non-Pakistani to coach the Pakistani cricket team.His website reads he’s ‘Still Standin’ and I think no body has the user id and password to change that.
We lost somebody today with innovative ideas, does any body remember the way he was conversing with SA captain Hansie Cronje through a earpiece when South Africa took the field against India discussing and changing strategies with Hansie in 1999 World Cup? I clearly remember the match in which he put up a personal scoring board on a sheet, comparing Indian and Pakistan scores and asking the players to be calm and keep the wickets in hand while they chased down one of Indian mammoth totals a couple of years back. Though he had some political hiccups running all the way during his coaching to the cricket-patriotic asian country, we can not reject having accepted that he had taken Pakistan to the next level. It is a demise to see that nothing went right for them from the start of the Worldcup.

I have been following the World Cup hype too closely and noticed that the barometer was reaching it’s saturation when Pakistan batted awfully against Ireland. And as expected all hell broke loose when the Barometer finally burst that evening after Ireland chased down the target with just a few blips. Yesterday, that is On 18th March 2007 at approximately 17:15, it was reported that Woolmer had been taken to hospital after he was found unconscious in his hotel room, it was later confirmed that Bob Woolmer had died. The news that he had suffered from an un-named medical condition and that the cause of death was as yet unknown increases my concerns potentially.

This raises a lot of questions to the cricketing future, especially to Pakistan’s cricket future. I wonder who’ll take up the charge after him, passions being so high, people desperate of wins, the cricket-patriotic mobs, and so on so forth. There were wild statements made in the open by a number of fans associations asking to chop off Bob and Inzy. Few others, were sparing enough, by just asking them to step down from their respective positions. But that wasn’t helping the cause of the game either. An insight to such situations just terrifies me.
The authorities have to come out and report the actual cause of the death. Just saying it was an un-known disease doesn’t make any good to the tensions building up.
The sub continent was, is and I think will pose certain threats to the game always as it has been right from cricket’s birth. In my opinion, we should have passion and it should not cross certain limits.
Do please post your comments.