Tony Becca

WHEN CHRIS Dehring and Michael Hall, Wayne Reid and Robert Bryan along with Dr. Marion Ducasse were making plans to host the Cricket World Cup, I am positive that at no time did it cross their minds that they would have to deal with something as tragic as the death of a player or an official of one of the teams.

Unfortunately, however, they had to deal with the sudden death of Bob Woolmer - the coach of the Pakistan team who was found dead in his hotel room last Sunday morning.

Born in India, Woolmer lived in Kent, went to school in Kent, played for Kent and then represented England first as an all-rounder and then as a top order batsman.

He then played in Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, was a member of a rebel team that toured South Africa in 1982, and ended up as the coach of Western Province in South Africa, Warwickshire in England and of South Africa and Pakistan.

Probably the most experienced, the most travelled coach of all time, Woolmer also served as head of the ICC's High Performance Centre for a while, and as such he has coached in almost every affiliate member country of the ICC.

Renowned as a coach

Although he played 19 Test matches for England and scored three centuries, Woolmer, a nippy medium-pacer and a straight, upright batsman, was more famous, more renowned as a coach - and deservedly so.

Apart from his tremendous success at Warwickshire and with South Africa, Woolmer was a devoted man to the game, to the development of the game through the development of the players and, because of that, he left no stones unturned in his effort to develop technique.

As the first coach to use a computer to record the technique of players for use in their development, Woolmer and his computer became part of the scenery at cricket matches and today, because of Woolmer, a coach and his computer is considered par for the course, a coach without a computer, no coach at all.

Wonderful man

He was a nice man, a wonderful man to be exact and it seems that everywhere he went the players liked him.

I first met Bob Woolmer in Kimberley during the World Cup in 2003. I met him, through Pat Gibson of the Times of London a few minutes after he had done an interview with representatives of the West Indies for the job as coach of the West Indies and in the end and for whatever reason he did not get the job, I was impressed with his quiet confidence and his nice, friendly and warm smile.

I met him a few times after that - the last time on Saturday evening at Sabina Park and some 70 or 80 minutes after his team, Pakistan, had surprisingly lost to Ireland in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the game.

I had just come out of the elevator on the ground floor of the new north stand, he, Inzamam-ul-Haq and a security guard had just come down the steps, I looked at him, I said hello, and he said hello.

The three of them looked around, said something to each other, and then went back up the stairs. I was waiting on a friend - on Gibson, they came back down the stairs, I said to him, "tough luck", and he said, "that's life", and walked away, a sad look on his face.

When I heard the news shortly after midday on Sunday during the match between a Melbourne Invitation side and the Terenure Taverners Club of Ireland at Melbourne Oval, I was shocked.

Disappointment

I could not believe it - not even when I remembered Pakistan's shocking defeat, the effect it must have had on him and the look on his face afterwards. It was the look of a man that was hurt, of a man that was disappointed and of a man that was suffering inside.

Bob Woolmer was a man who loved the game, and who devoted his life to the game. He was also a man who loved the players around him an it does not look so it looks like something evil might have happened in his hotel room some time that night or early in the morning, when all is said and done, may be it was that love, that devotion, why he left us so suddenly.

Whatever it was, Bob Woolmer was a good man, he devoted his life to the game, he was great for the game and all those in the game will miss him for a long, long time.