The murder of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer has highlighted the dark side of a sport once known as the gentleman's game but which is now plagued by underworld match-fixing gangs.

Jamaica police, while confirming that Woolmer was strangled to death a day after Pakistan were knocked out of the World Cup following their loss to unfancied Ireland, have ruled out mugging as a likely motive.

The police have stressed they do not suspect anyone yet of the crime, but fingers are once again being pointed at the powerful betting and match-fixing mafia that has become synonymous with cricket.

A notorious gangster Babloo Srivastava brazenly appeared on Indian television channels on Thursday to suggest that the country's most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, may be behind the murder.

"The Pakistan-Ireland match must have been fixed," Srivastava told reporters while he was being taken to court in the north-west city of Lucknow for a hearing on an unrelated murder case.

"The D-Company (Ibrahim's gang) may have lots of money at stake. Woolmer may have got an inkling of the fixing and hence he was killed."

In normal times, Srivastava's statement would have been scoffed at as a bizzare attempt by an underworld figure trying to get even with another with whom he had reportedly fallen out.

But these are not normal times and Ibrahim, wanted by India for the 1993 Mumbai bombings which killed more than 200 people, has long been suspected by police of being the match-fixing kingpin.

India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which probed a match-fixing scandal in 2000 after Delhi Police taped former South African captain Hansie Cronje's conversations with illegal bookmakers, alluded to the underworld's links with cricket in its report.

"During the inquiry," the CBI report said, "it was learnt that the lure of easy money has gradually attracted the underworld into this racket.

"It seems that it is only a matter of time before major organized gangs take direct control of this racket, a phenomenon that will have implications not only for cricket but for national security as a whole."

The CBI investigations and subsequent action from cricket bodies around the world led to life bans being imposed on three Test captains, Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddin of India and Salim Malik of Pakistan.

Cronje, who accepted having links with bookmakers but denied he was involved in match-fixing, was killed in a plane crash near Cape Town in 2002.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) formed an anti-corruption unit in 2000 that now oversees every one-day international and Test match played in any part of the world.

Woolmer's tragic demise is not the first instance of a cricket-related murder that could have links with the underworld.

The body of a well-known Pakistani bookmaker, Hanif Kodvavi alias Hanif Cadbury, was found badly mutilated in Johannesburg in 1999 amid speculation he was killed for not paying up betting money.

Indian police regularly bust betting rings across the country whenever cricket internationals are played, but the absence of any clear laws against illegal bookmaking sees offenders get off lightly.

Some are not even caught. Sanjiv Chawla, whose taped conversations with Cronje triggered the match-fixing scandal, has been out of the reach of police even though he is believed to be holed up in London.

No one still knows the real identity of "John", the man who Australian cricketers Mark Waugh and Shane Warne said paid them to supply weather and team-related information in 1995.

Recently, police claimed they taped conversations between West Indian cricketer Marlon Samuels and an alleged bookmaker, Mukesh Kochar, during a one-day series in India.

Samuels accepted knowing Kochar as a friend and denied any wrongdoing. Kochar said he was not a bookmaker and stressed Samuels was like a son to him.

The ICC is still probing the case.

(Article: Copyright © 2007 AFP)