MONTEGO BAY (Jamaica), June 12: Former Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer was not murdered but died of natural causes, Jamaican police said on Tuesday in a bombshell announcement three months after his death rocked the World Cup tournament.

After first treating the death of 58-year-old Woolmer as homicide, sparking feverish speculation about the role of gambling mafias in the game, police said there was now no reason to suspect foul play or match-fixing in his death.

South African and Canadian pathologists had concurred with a finding by a British forensics expert that “Mr Woolmer died of natural causes,” Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) commissioner Lucius Thomas said.

Further toxicology tests also showed that Woolmer, who was found dead in his hotel room on March 18, was not poisoned.

“The JCF accepts these findings and has now closed its investigation into the death of Mr Bob Woolmer,” Thomas said.

Thomas added that “neither the ICC nor the JCF have found any evidence of any impropriety by players, match officials nor management during the investigation of Mr Bob Woolmer's death.”

Some 400 people had been interviewed, and statements taken from 250 in the inquiry which also involved detectives from Scotland Yard and Pakistan.

“We are relieved that it has been officially announced that Bob died of natural causes,” Woolmer's widow, Gill, told AFP from her home in Cape Town.

“It is now over.” The head of the International Cricket Council's (ICC) corruption-busting force said those who linked Woolmer's death to rumours of match-fixing should now “shut up.” The reputation of both the World Cup and the game were “unnecessarily tarnished as the theories about Woolmer's death became wilder and more bizarre with many of those theories suggesting a link to corruption and match-fixing,” said Paul Condon, chairman of the cricket body's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU).—AFP