Caught Out - Shocking Revelations of Corruption in International Cricket. Brian Radford
We even worked out that spices in curry lingering in our saliva helped with shining [the ball].
‘Bob showed that if you worked hard, thought positively, and backed yourself, anything was possible. He put smiles back on faces at Edgbaston, creating an environment in which everyone wanted to be involved. He taught us how to assess and correct things within games, and taught us about the importance of imagination and affirmation. He was miles ahead of other coaches at the time.’
Bob Woolmer was born in 1948 in a hospital in Kanpur, India, which was aptly situated directly opposite the town’s cricket ground. He came to prominence as a stylish stroke-playing batsman in the successful Kent side in the 1970s. He also took wickets with his accurate seam bowling.
Woolmer made his debut for England in the Second Test against Australia in 1975, and on his second appearance later in the series doggedly accumulated 149 runs in more than eight hours at the crease to save the match, bravely defying the fiery fast-bowling pair of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. Two further centuries against the Australians established Woolmer as a dependable international batsman, but his escalating career was suddenly halted when he joined the maverick Kerry Packer World Series Cricket revolution in 1977.
His return to Test match cricket was disappointing, and he quit as a top-class player in 1981 to join a rebel tour to South Africa. Woolmer played in 19 Tests, and scored 1,059 runs at an average of 33.09.
Eventually, he started to use his talents as a coach in South Africa, and returned to England in 1991 to take charge of Warwickshire – a role in which he was enormously successful, steering the county club to four trophies in two years – and it came as no surprise when he was beckoned back to South Africa in 1994 to coach the national side. Again he performed brilliantly and helped South Africa to win ten out of 15 series of Test matches, and prepared a squad for One-day Internationals that was just as strong.
Woolmer was a pioneer of cricket technology. He used video cameras, laptops and other electronic gadgets to identify and correct flaws in his own players, and to spot and exploit weaknesses in the opposition. He lost his South African job in 1999 after a World Cup defeat by Australia, and he changed course completely and became a high-performance manager for the International Cricket Council, where he helped to develop the emerging cricketing nations in skills and strategy.
Woolmer returned to top-flight coaching in 2004 when he surprisingly accepted an invitation from the Pakistan Cricket Board to undertake what turned out to be the hardest job in the game. Amid all the horrendous political and playing problems that erupted in his three years in the post, Woolmer remained courteous, diligent, never avoiding awkward questions, always offering honest explanations, and never once tainting his own, or his team’s integrity.
It was only in the last few months of his impressive reign that traumatic off-field problems, splits in the team and political undermining began to get under his skin and cause him to lose his cool and react aggressively. A blazing row with Shoaib Akhtar in South Africa, the ball-tampering walk-out at The Oval, and shameful drugs bans for Akhtar and Mohammad Asif were just a few of the many disturbing incidents that piled on the pressure.
But above all else, Bob Woolmer was a placid person who was passionately dedicated to his work, although he could be fiercely outspoken if the occasion demanded it, and was especially forthright on issues such as poor pitches, indifferent umpiring, and the congested international fixture programme.
Ironically, his frankness was never more in evidence than in his last hours when answering a barrage of blunt and awkward questions after Pakistan’s humiliating drubbing by Ireland.
He left the ground a sad and embarrassed man, never to return…
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