He played in 19 Test matches and six One Day Internationals for the England cricket team and later coached South Africa, Warwickshire and Pakistan.

On 18 March 2007, Woolmer died suddenly in Jamaica, just a few hours after the Pakistan team's unexpected elimination at the hands of Ireland in the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

[1] Woolmer was born in the Georgina McRobert Memorial Hospital across the road from the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur,[2] India on 14 May 1948.

But Woolmer's international career stalled after he joined the World Series break-away group run by Kerry Packer.

He is credited with having made the reverse sweep a more popular shot for batsmen in the 1990s,[9][10] as well as being one of the first to use computer analysis, and trying to adapt the knowledge of goalkeepers to wicketkeepers in cricket.

At the 1996 tournament on the Indian subcontinent, his team won all their preliminary group matches before succumbing to the West Indies in the quarter finals.

He later returned to Warwickshire, and gained attention when he called for the removal of a life ban on South African captain Hansie Cronje for match-fixing.

He was feted when his team reversed the result in early 2005 on their return tour to India, drawing the Tests 1–1 and winning the ODI series 4–2.

In August 2006, on the eve of Pakistan's Twenty20 international against England in Bristol, Woolmer was forced to defend his reputation when it was claimed Pakistani players lifted the seam of the ball when he was in charge of the team.

On 12 June 2007, Lucius Thomas, the commissioner of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, announced that the investigation had concluded that Woolmer had died of natural causes, and was not murdered as indicated by the earlier pathologist's report.

[17] The findings of the pathologists, and of Metropolitan Police detectives who had visited Jamaica to assist with the investigation, were reported in the weeks leading up to the announcement, which was widely expected by the time it was made.

Reports suggested that Woolmer suffered from health problems including an enlarged heart and diabetes, which may have contributed to his death.

[18][19][20] On 6 November, coroner Patrick Murphy asked for further tests to be carried out on samples taken from Woolmer's body following discrepancies in the toxicology reports by forensic scientists from the Caribbean and the UK.

[21] After hearing twenty-six days of evidence, the jury at the inquest returned an open verdict, refusing to rule out the controversial strangulation theory put forward by Ere Seshaiah.

[22] In an interview with Fox News, former South African cricketer Clive Rice claimed that Woolmer was murdered by organised crime groups, saying "These mafia betting syndicates do not stop at anything and they do not care who gets in their way".

[23] Former Australian captain Ian Chappell has also gone on record stating that he "doubts that he died of natural causes" and speculated that Woolmer may have been about to reveal "some misgivings".

[24] An article appearing in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues in 2010 suggested that there were links in the reporting of context surrounding Woolmer's death and Islamophobia in the British media.