Cricket coach wasn’t slain, paper reports

Scotland Yard investigators have concluded that Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer died of natural causes and was not strangled as local police have said, a Jamaican newspaper reported Sunday.

In London, Scotland Yard declined to comment on the report in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper, which wrote that Woolmer died of heart failure. The agency also said it would not discuss an analysis of toxicology tests that a British government lab conducted on behalf of Jamaican authorities.

“This is an inquiry being conducted by the Jamaican authorities,” said a Scotland Yard spokesman, on condition of anonymity. “It’s down to them to comment on developments.”

The report, which did not identify its source beyond saying it was in London, was the latest in the slew of conflicting media accounts since Woolmer was found unconscious in his Kingston hotel room March 18 and pronounced dead at a hospital.

The previous day, his powerhouse team had lost to underdog Ireland in the World Cup, ensuring Pakistan’s first-round exit from the tournament.

Jamaican police first said the investigation was inconclusive, but later said Woolmer had been strangled. A barrage of unsourced reports, especially in the British media, have said Woolmer was drugged or poisoned before being strangled.

Mark Shields, the lead Jamaican police investigator in the case, had refused to comment on the reports, saying he was waiting for the British government-owned lab’s verification of toxicology tests done in Jamaica.

Shields, a Scotland Yard veteran, did not immediately respond to calls for comment on Sunday’s report. He traveled to Britain last week and had been expected to go to South Africa, where Woolmer’s family lives.

One of two Pakistani detectives who traveled to Jamaica to assist in the probe told the Associated Press on May 7 that the investigation so far was “inconclusive.”

The detective, Mir Zubair Mahmood, said it was still unclear whether Woolmer had been killed.