The warnings were loud and long. “Match-fixing has to be sorted,” said the former England captain Ian Botham in 2001, “or someone will be assassinated.” Fears grew when killings in Dubai and South Africa were blamed on gangs running illegal bets on cricket matches; and a major investigation into corruption in the game revealed that players and officials believed their lives to be in danger.

The warnings were loud and long. “Match-fixing has to be sorted,” said the former England captain Ian Botham, “or someone will be assassinated.” Fears grew when killings in Dubai and South Africa were blamed on gangs running illegal bets on cricket matches; and a major investigation into corruption in the game revealed that players and officials believed their lives to be in danger.

Now there is a body, that of the Pakistan coach, Bob Woolmer, who was strangled a week ago at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. The whole team was questioned afterwards, but last night Jamaican police spoke to the team captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, about the murder for a second time. They also interviewed the assistant coach, Mushtaq Ahmed, and the team manager, Talat Ali. All three men have now been released; later, the team left Montego Bay on a flight heading home to Lahore. Deputy Police Commissioner in Kingston, Mark Shields, said he had no reason “at this stage” to believe any of the Pakistani team were involved in the murder.

Yet there were reports that Jamaican detectives were investigating the possibility that Woolmer was involved in a row with members of his team just hours before he died. A Jamaican police source told the Mail on Sunday that ” when Mr Woolmer boarded the coach to go back to the hotel, he was very, very angry. Our investigators are looking into a report that he confronted some members of the touring party on the bus. They did not perform up to standard and he vented his disgust verbally.”

There is alternative speculation that Mr Woolmer was killed to prevent him revealing details of mafia betting syndicates. An angry friend of Mr Woolmer said he had “absolutely no doubt” that the warnings stretching back six years ­about violence coming to the game had been proved tragically right. The former South Africa captain Clive Rice said he was convinced his fellow player and coach had been intending to tell the truth about matches being thrown. The Pakistan team has been dogged by such accusations, as were Mr Woolmer’s employers, South Africa. “Bob knew a lot of what went on during the match-fixing scandal in which Hansie Cronje was nailed,” said Rice. “He told me a lot that never came out.”

Cronje was banned for life for taking gifts and cash in return for fixing games. He died in a plane crash five years ago, but Clive Rice does not believe the official line that it was due to pilot error. “I am convinced his death wasn’t an accident, and I will continue to believe that until the day I die.”

He fears Mr Woolmer has become the next victim of south Asian gangs which have long been accused of paying players handsomely to play badly, and even bribing or threatening officials to influence team selection.

Two Pakistan team officials are due to stay in Jamaica until the coroner allows the body of Mr Woolmer to leave the island. An inquest with a jury will be held “as soon as practical” said police; but they have revealed that death was from “asphyxia due to manual strangulation” .

Depressed and unable to sleep, the coach sent an email to his wife from room 374 at 3.12am last Sunday morning. The leg-spinner Danish Kaneria, who was next door, said he did not hear any noises. The Pegasus Hotel said there was no record of anyone using an electronic key card to enter Mr Woolmer’s room on the 12th floor. Jamaican police say that suggests the 58-year-old Englishman opened the door to his attacker. His body was found in the bathroom by a maid later that morning and police sources have suggested he was wearing only a towel. Vomit was found nearby, leading officers to suspect he was drugged or poisoned. Nothing had obviously been stolen. ” It looks as if it may be somebody [who was] somehow linked to him,” said the Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields, on secondment from Scotland Yard.

But Richard Sydenham, a friend to several Pakistan players and founder of a cricket website featuring them, said: “This was a high-profile tournament which was supposed to have a great level of security. Knowing this, how often do people actually lock their doors in a hotel? Woolmer could have thought it was room service or a maid.”

He was declared dead at the hospital just after noon. That same day, even as players came to terms with the death of a coach who was also a father figure, the Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq announced his retirement from one-day cricket and leading the team at test level.

Mr Woolmer’s wife, Gill, said soon after the news broke that she was sure her husband had not committed suicide. He had been planning to retire to their home in South Africa to write books and run cricket academies after the World Cup. The International Cricket Council’s Anti-Corruption Unit is now investigating whether the murder was related to gambling. A proof of Mr Woolmer’s unpublished autobiography went missing before the killing, but its co-author insisted yesterday that the coach was not “harbouring information on match fixing” and certainly not in “association with corrupt bookmakers”.

However, a second author claimed Mr Woolmer asked him for help with another, different book about his time with the controversial Pakistan team. “I am not a name-and-shame guy, just the honest facts,” Bob Woolmer wrote in an email to the journalist Osman Samiuddin, saying that he intended to start work on this book after the World Cup.

There were whispers that defeat to the West Indies at the start of the tournament looked unlikely, while defeat to the cricketing minnows of Ireland the day before Mr Woolmer died was undoubtedly one of the greatest upsets in the history of the game. “Pakistan was devastated,” said Usman Hamid, a writer in the country. “People were really shocked and they condemned the team for losing to such a little adversary.”

Helping the ICC inquiry is Lord Condon, a former head of the Metropolitan Police, who investigated the state of cricket six years ago: “The most disturbing aspect of the tolerance of corruption is the fear that some people have expressed for their personal safety, or the safety of their family.”

Lord Condon reported in 2001 that he had “spoken to people who have been threatened and who have alleged a murder and a kidnapping linked to cricket corruption”. One criminal had influence over the selection and performance of a team, while a contract killing in South Africa took place after a dispute between rival match fixers.

Ian Botham, speaking just after the Condon report, warned that the scandal would not go away “because of the amount of money involved” Botham said nobody had been stupid enough to approach him, but he imagined that once involved in the “web of intrigue” it would be impossible to get out. “You don’t. You’re in it for life.”

Internet and spread betting on cricket has become massive; and in Pakistan and India, where gambling on the result of games is illegal, gangs gather billions of rupees in bets. Bets cover everything from the batting order to the number of runs an individual player might get. For a single match between Pakistan and India, an estimated £510m will be placed in illegal bets.

“The large sums of money being bet also mean the threat of corruption is a significant one,” says the ICC, pledging to be vigilant. The television commentator Kishore Bhimani has described being accosted by a gangster called Sharad Shetty who runs illegal gambling in India and Pakistan as the right-hand man of an even more powerful figure. “He asked me to send signals on TV if rain was threatened or there were any dramatic happenings in the dressing room or any other naughtiness,” said Mr Bhimani. “I fled with my life intact.” In January 2003, two months before the last World Cup, Sharad Shetty was shot dead in Dubai.

Bob Woolmer’s death may yet prove to be unrelated to corruption but even before police confirmed it as murder the former Pakistan fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz blamed “the match-fixing mafia”, saying: “I believe he found out about what went on in the West Indies and was about to reveal all.”