AP News, April 4th, 2007
Mourners paid tribute to slain cricket coach Bob Woolmer in his hometown Wednesday, remembering him both as an international legend and a local hero who defied apartheid to create one of South Africa's first mixed-race teams.
Woolmer, who had been Pakistan's coach since 2004, was found unconscious in his hotel room in Jamaica on March 18 and pronounced dead at a hospital. The day before, his team suffered a stunning loss to Ireland that eliminated it from the Cricket World Cup. Jamaican police said Woolmer was strangled.
Anglican priest Jerome Francis, who was one of hundreds of poor boys coached by Woolmer in the 1980s, led the service at a high school in a Cape Town suburb.
"Here was a man with so much worth to humanity," Francis told 300 mourners at Wynberg Boys' High School, including Woolmer's widow, Gill, and sons Dale and Russell.
The former England batsman trained deprived kids and became like a father to a generation of cricketers. In 1981, he became involved in the Avendale cricket club in a poor township of Cape Town, ignoring apartheid era restrictions on contacts between whites and blacks, said Bert Erickson, a longtime official with the team.
During protests of racist rule, Woolmer would press on with training sessions, then drive boys home to make sure they were safe, Erickson recalled.
Woolmer, an Englishman, went on to coach South Africa in the 1999 World Cup semifinals. But even at the height of his success, he kept helping poor youth.
"He was a player's coach. He was my mentor," said former South African fast bowler Allan Donald. "He put South Africa on the map and we'll remember him for that. In my book, he was the ultimate legend."
"He's still the most successful coach South Africa's ever had," spin bowler Paul Adams said. "We have lost a great soldier in the game."
During the service, longtime friend Tim Noakes denied rumors that Woolmer was about to blow the whistle on match-fixing in a coaching manual they were writing.
"Not once in the past five years did he mention match-fixing to me. The theory is completely without substance," said Noakes, whose book with Woolmer was in its final stages before the murder.
Woolmer was South Africa's coach during a match-fixing scandal, but was never implicated.
Woolmer's body remains in Jamaica pending a coroner's investigation.
