Cricket

Percy Sonn, 57, the president of the International Cricket Council who was instrumental in fighting racial segregation in the sport, died Sunday at a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, from complications after colon surgery. Sonn, a lawyer who became president of cricket's world governing body in 2006, helped guide his native South Africa back into the international fold after years of isolation because of apartheid. Born Sept.

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.

Many complain the cricket World Cup ran too long at a whopping seven weeks, but others might complain it didn't run long enough. The average American human brain, after all, cannot absorb cricket in seven weeks. Seven months might suffice. Or, not. Australia became the first country to win the World Cup for a third straight time, cementing its dynasty with a 53-run defeat of Sri Lanka on Saturday evening, but with the use of the dreaded Duckworth-Lewis method.

We Americans tend to adore Australians -- the verve, the humor, the toughness, the Kidman -- and one way for Americans to continue adoring Australians would be for Americans to continue ignoring cricket. It should be no problem. The masses on this turbulent planet who value cricket, meanwhile, live under Australian rule, as the seemingly interminable 2007 World Cup reiterates.

For the biggest cog in an erstwhile empire, England sure has managed to sprinkle the world with mirth. Just look at its generosity across time. First, it invents a horde of sports that become popular and then it introduces those sports to its stunning array of colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, come centuries No. 20 and 21, it proceeds to lose at the games it invented, sometimes even to the former colonies.

GLOBALIZATION may lessen exotic experiences around the planet, but an American could find inscrutable mystery right now in the Caribbean. That's because a handful of English-speaking nations deep in the Snorkel Belt speak a popular but eccentric lingo in which "over" is a noun and "wicket" has up to six definitions. In other words, they're talking cricket -- and now more than ever.

Going into it, this year's cricket World Cup seemed a frolicsome stint in which the uninitiated might learn to decipher such Sanskrit as, "Tanmay Mishra was bowled by Paul Collingwood for a duck." Instead, it's arguably the most traumatized global sporting event since the 1972 Munich Olympics. With 30 of its 47 days still left, it already had its heart and guts removed. The heart went when the World Cup became the site of a slaying of a famous, esteemed participant, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer.

More than a billion fans around the world are rooting for their favorite teams during cricket's World Cup series, but one question unites them. Who killed Bob Woolmer? The naked body of Robert Andrew Woolmer, the coach of Pakistan's national team and one of the sport's most famous figures, was found a week ago in a blood-splattered room at the ritzy Jamaica Pegasus Hotel here. Just the day before, his team had been eliminated from the seven-week tournament by upstart Ireland.

In the debate over which sport boasts the most zealous fans, we have a winner. It's cricket. No, really. It's cricket. No. Really. It's cricket. As the first week of the cricket World Cup in the Caribbean became a mutiny of the minnows, with small cricket countries shocking big cricket countries in upsets astounding even to cricket idiots, citizens of two big cricket countries harrumphed. Then they got really miffed.

March madness begins, and we Americans begin to obsess. We have the opening ceremonies tonight, yes, but we know that the meat of the cricket World Cup doesn't begin until Tuesday, when West Indies plays Pakistan in Jamaica. Sure, we all know our U.S.