Pakistan's coach Bob Woolmer was murdered

[TheGuru]

The cricket world was in a state of shock Friday after it emerged that Pakistan's coach Bob Woolmer was murdered in his hotel room after the team's World Cup defeat to Ireland.

Jamaican police said that a post-mortem examination established that the former England player, who was also a former coach of South Africa, had died as a result of "manual strangulation."

"In these circumstances, the matter of Mr Woolmer's death is now being treated as murder," police commissioner Lucius Thomas said.

Police have meanwhile dismissed reports from Pakistan and India which said a suspect had been arrested in connection with the investigation.

The head of the Islamabad office of Pakistan's Geo news channel, Hamid Mir, told India's NDTV that a person had been taken into custody and that the suspect's identity would soon be revealed.

Mir, a prominent investigative journalist, cited sources close the investigation.

However Jamaica's deputy police commissioner Mark Shields told BBC Radio Five Live: "I don't know where that's come from. That's nonsense, as far as I'm concerned. There's actually no truth in that.

"I can unequivocally dismiss that, unless someone's given themselves up in India and we don't know about it, but I think that's highly unlikely."

Shields said there had been no sign of forced entry into the Pakistan coach's hotel room.

Woolmer, 58, was found unconscious on Sunday, the day after his side's shock elimination at the hands of Ireland at the World Cup, which is being played in the West Indies until April 28.

"That's one of the interesting facts of the case. There's no sign of any forced entry at all," Shields said.

"Bob was a large man. It would have taken some significant force to subdue him," he said, adding that police were ruling nothing out and had "lots of lines of inquiry".

"I have to say at this stage that it looks as if it may be somebody who's somehow linked to him, because clearly he let somebody into his hotel room and it may be that he knew who that person was."

There has been speculation that Woolmer's death may be linked to gambling cartels. On Thursday, Jamaican police questioned and fingerprinted members of Pakistan's cricket squad over the death.

Pakistan team spokesman Pervez Jamil Mir said the players were "in a state of shock" over the news that Woolmer had been killed.

Cricket's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), said the World Cup would continue as planned to "demonstrate that cricket cannot be put off by a cowardly criminal act."

ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed said the entire cricket community was shocked by the death of the former England player.