Shaphan

A witness to a witnessing is a witness

Before leaving this subject, I just want to explain and clarify the story of how I got involved in the Bob Woolmer investigation.

Late in the evening of Saturday, March 17th, I was home alone, as usual. It could even have been early Sunday morning, London time.  I had, for some reason, Radio Five Live on in the background. I’ve vaguely followed cricket since the early 1970s, when my heroes were Alan Knott and Derek Underwood, and I supported Kent in the County Championship. So I’ve been aware of Bob Woolmer’s career over the past 30 years.

So when I heard his voice, and knowing that this had been his swan-song in international cricket, I gave the interview my attention.  I was much struck by what I heard.  It seemed to me that, below the surface of his words, he suspected that the Pakistan batsmen had conspired to throw the match.  He even named three of them.  To me, it was one of the most arresting, moving and dramatic interviews I had heard for a while.

The next day, he was dead.  At first it was treated as a suspicious death but within days it became a murder inquiry.  The Jamaican police started to appeal for witnesses, for people who had spoken to Woolmer in his final hours, for any information that could help them with their investigation.  I thought about the valedictory interview and hoped that the BBC had responded to the call.

I looked at the fall of the Pakistan wickets on YouTube. Except perhaps for the two catches taken by the wicket-keeper, all of the wickets looked dubious to me.  What my eyes were seeing seemed to back up what I believed my ears had heard Woolmer imply in the interview.

On Monday, March 26th, a Guardian journalist wrote an article (“This innuendo about the Pakistan team is a disgrace”) criticizing journalists for pointing the finger of suspicion at the Pakistan squad.  I submitted a couple of comments on the Comment is Free weblog.  It increasingly occurred to me that I was one of the very few people who had heard that final interview.

A witness to a witnessing is a witness.  The thousands of people listening to Five Live that night became witnesses in a soon-to-open Jamaican murder investigation.  I was one of them.  But it seemed crazy for me to contact the police about the interview, or to contact the BBC and make sure they did their duty and handed it over.  If all the listeners did that, the police and the BBC would be swamped.  It was the responsibility of Alison Mitchell, the reporter in Jamaica, to contact the police as a witness, or for her producer to act, or for Five Live managers.  And yet…my gut told me that Alison Mitchell had been listening to Bob but not hearing him, and that a similar inattention to detail could lead her not to realize the possible value of the interview to the police.  My gut also said that the BBC corporately did not consider itself to be a possible witness, only seeing its role as a medium by which the police could appeal for witnesses.  Finally, my instinct was that the Jamaica Constabulary Force had not heard the interview.  On Tuesday afternoon, about 5pm London time, I emailed the JCF to let them know about what I’d heard [see below].

I wasn’t listening to Five Live that evening. If I had been, Five Live Sport was, as usual, on between 7 and 10pm. The final hour was set aside for chat about cricket – the final half-hour of which was focused on Bob Woolmer and his last interview with Alison Mitchell.  Mark Saggers was the presenter – he was in Barcelona, it being the eve of the England-Andorra soccer match.  The estimable Dougie Brown, the Scotland and Warwickshire player, who was a friend of Bob, was in the Birmingham studio, whilst Ms. Mitchell was in London.  Never did they admit that the BBC had been sitting on this interview for ten days.  Ms. Mitchell did not explain that, several hours previously, she’d been contacted by detectives who’d been contacted by a listener in England (me) about the interview, which she had forgotten all about and had considered innocuous.  That lack of honesty with the listeners did not do the BBC proud.

After the five-minute one-on-one interview was played, It seemed clear to me, from their verbal reactions, that both Saggers and Brown were touched by the content of the interview.  It occurred to me that not only had my intervention been helpful to the police, and to Woolmer’s family, it had benefited his friends too.

Transcribing Woolmer

As mentioned previously, the BBC's transcript of Bob Woolmer's last interview left something to be desired. So, I've had a go at transcribing it myself. My attempt is set out, in full, below the fold.

My version and the BBC's are surprisingly different, considering that they attempt to transcribe the very same set of sounds. Here's the BBC's version of Woolmer's first answer.

Bob Woolmer (BW): "We batted abysmally, really - just made mistake after mistake after mistake. It just compounded, and eventually we were 40 to 50 runs short.

"But I have to say we made some very injudicious shot selections - Mohammad Yousuf, Kamran Akmal and Azhar Mahmood are three off the top of my head who were playing shots which weren't necessary at the time.

"That's sad because two-and-a-half or three years' work has gone in to this, and to fall out like this is very disappointing."

And here's mine.

A.: We batted…abysmally, really, and…er…we just made mistake after mistake after mistake, and it just compounded and…and eventually we…we’ve 40/50 runs short.

But I have to say that…er…we made some very…um…injudicious shot…shot selection. Really…I mean…er…um…you know…I could name Yousuf and Kamran Akmal and Azhar Mahmood – just three off the top of my head – …um…who were…sort of…playing shots which weren’t necessary at the time.

And…and that’s sad, because of…there’s two-and-a-half, three years work gone into this, and to fall out, like this, is very disappointing.

Woolmer's final interview (Pt 2)

Tuesday afternoon, I emailed the Jamaican police.

Dear Jamaican Police

Re murder of Bob Woolmer

I am writing to draw your attention to a piece of evidence that may or may not be significant to your inquiry.  The press have not reported it and thus I am unsure as to whether your detectives know about it or not.  On the evening before he died, some hours after the Ireland match, Woolmer was interviewed by the BBC's Alison Mitchell.  I heard it on (I think, from memory) Radio Five Live here in the UK.  He was asked to explain the performance of the Pakistan team.  He said he couldn't explain the batting display and that three of the dismissals had been inexplicable - he then named the three individuals (I think they were Yousuf, Azar Mahmood and Kamran Akmal, but I only heard the interview once, that evening, so my memory is fallible).  It was an extraordinary moment, because he was, in coded language but in effect, accusing some of the batsmen of having deliberately lost their wickets.  That's what I believe I heard that evening.  If you haven't done so already, I urge you to track it down and listen to it.  I think it was recorded at the hotel and may well have been his final interview.

Good luck with your work,

Faithfully,

Two hours later I got I nice email back:

Good Day,

Thanks very much for the information.  Your email will be forwarded to the Investigating Officer.

Warm regards,

That evening, Alison Mitchell was called into the BBC studio and made to talk about Woolmer's last interview on the TMS podcast [27min.ff].  She said she had thought the contents of the interview had been "absolutely innocuous".  After the interview is replayed [34min.ff], Mitchell reads out the number of the police hotline for any information on Bob's murder, but she does not mention that she had been sitting on this interview for ten days, blissfully unaware that the police (and Woolmer's family) might be interested in what Woolmer had to say hours before he was killed.

[Download bbctestmatchspecialpodcast_20070327-2200_40_st.mp3 - TMS Podcast 2007/03/27:  Right-click to download]

The transcript of the interview is also now online.  It is not as revelatory as I had remembered it, but his disillusionment with Pakistan cricket comes though loud and clear.  [The transcript doesn't do justice to the interview, which is better heard than read.] 

Alison Mitchell (AM): What are your thoughts on losing to Ireland?

Bob Woolmer (BW):  "We batted abysmally, really - just made mistake after mistake after mistake. It just compounded, and eventually we were 40 to 50 runs short.

"But I have to say we made some very injudicious shot selections - Mohammad Yousuf, Kamran Akmal and Azhar Mahmood are three off the top of my head who were playing shots which weren't necessary at the time.

"That's sad because two-and-a-half or three years' work has gone in to this, and to fall out like this is very disappointing." [More]

Bob Woolmer's last (?) interview

(Condolences to Woolmer's family and friends.)

On the evening before he was murdered, some hours after Pakistan had unexpectedly lost against Ireland, Bob Woolmer gave an interview to the BBC, which I heard on Five Live.  The (female?) interviewer asked him to explain the woeful batting display by his team.  He agreed that it had been a terrible performance, and said that the dismissals of three of the batsmen had been inexplic...  Here he stopped, checked himself, and then said that the dismissals of - and here he named the three batsmen - were inexplicable.  I think the names he gave were Mohammad Yousuf, Azhar Mahmood and Kamran Akmal (although I've bolstered my memory with this Cricinfo report [link]).

I've since looked at the dismissals on YouTube and agree that all three, but especially the last two, appear soft, but I'd also point to the other Pakistan dismissals that are caught in the slips.  Some of the Pakistani batsman appear to be giving the Irish slip-fielding practice.  I've tried to have a soft spot for Inzamam-ul-Haq over the years but I'm afraid his dismissal looks even softer than the three spotlighted by Woolmer. It appears to me, and I'm sure it did to Woolmer, that the Pakistan team deliberately threw the match.  All ten Pakistani wickets were catches - no LBWs, stumpings or run outs.

In that (last?) radio interview, I thought Bob Woolmer's frustrations overcame him.  Even though there was one more match to play in the World Cup, and he was still under contract with the PCB for months, it sounded as though his hurt pride would not tolerate him staying quiet about his suspicions of what had happened that day.  So he named names.  I think that, in his bewilderment, he threw caution to the wind, believing perhaps that he was in a strong enough position, and close enough to the exit-door, to do so.  But it seems like he wasn't.

I'm not suggesting that any of the above-named players was the murderer - I am suggesting that Woolmer, in that radio interview, crossed a line that he couldn't uncross; he had become an insider starting to blow the whistle; and that he created a mortal enemy or enemies in so doing.

Well, that's my theory, anyway. I hope the Beeb has the nous to recognize the possible import of that interview and to send it to the Jamaican police.