Bob Woolmer’s undetermined legacy

The flamboyant Pak coach’s invincible aura can never die.

As Bob Woolmer’s mysterious aura reverberates through the Caribbean, a shocked cricketing fraternity is only sure of one thing – the Pak coach represented everything that is cricket.

The flashy 58-year-old cricketer turned coach, who clubbed the key board with coaching manual, was working on, or rather giving finishing touches to, one of the two books he was working on ‘Discovering Cricket,’ when fate called on him. Finally.

That was after Pakistan’s shock defeat at the hands of minnows Ireland. Pressures of coaching in a cricket crazed subcontinent notwithstanding, for those who know Woolmer at least through the reams of newspapers or television, it would be naïve to suggest that Woolmer could not stand the defeat at the hands of minnows Ireland and died with a broken heart.

For Woolmer was lionhearted.

He would have been in one way glad that Ireland, a team which he had once coached, had earned the distinction of shocking one of the most talented but rag-tag bunch of cricketers, torn between domestic strife and religious beliefs as well as their masters who call the shots from the Army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Woolmer never ran away from controversies and the pressure situations that accompanied it.

And that is probably why he put up a stout defence of disgraced late South African captain Hansie Cronje during a private meeting he sought with the former Delhi Police Commissioner K K Paul. Woolmer believed Cronje was innocent. Paul had other reasons to stick to a divergent viewpoint.

That was a private meeting, arranged by an Indian scribe. And the purpose of the meeting was to get more insights into the match fixing scandal.

Ironically, fresh theories doing the rounds suggest that Woolmer himself may be a victim of match-fixers and their shadowy deals with cricketers. This was suggested by former Pak great Sarfraz Navaz, who once shared the new ball with a legend called Imran Khan – The man who lifted the world cup for Pakistan.

Needless to say Imran was a harsh critic of Woolmer and his laptop tactics. Imran believed in raw impulse – like when he spotted Akram and Waqar. Woolmer stressed on permutations and combinations that make a team click as a unit. Both were right, but somehow Pak cricket lost direction.

Like Imran, Miandad too opposed the coach in Woolmer. But while Imran and Miandad fared well as cricketers than Woolmer, they lack the coaching credentials of Woolmer.

Right-handed Woolmer was a batsman and medium pacer.

He played 19 Tests and six One-day Internationals for England in 1970s. That is it when his international career as a cricketer ended in 1981.

From then on it was rediscovering cricket, as his book was to be aptly named in the years to come.

Woolmer was going through his 38th year in cricket and 20th year as a coach. Fierce passion was his driving force, whether the game involved South Africa, Pakistan or Warwickshire.

Only that during his Pak stint, he had to spent some time more to ward of the whims and fancies of PCB bosses and their military masters. That means a little less time for cricket.

As fresh theories float before the autopsy report of the flamboyant Woolmer who immersed himself in the flames of cricket, there are some curious leaks of his second book.

It read: One run makes a difference. Every ball is an event.

That book is Bob Woolmer’s coaching manual. Perhaps unfinished.