I think that Pablo Escobar was a notorious drugs baron. If memory serves correctly, I think that the footballer was Andre Escobar. Definitely an easy one to get mixed up.
When Columbia beat Argentina 5-0 (I think that it was 5-0) in a qualifier for that world cup 4 people died in the celebrations. Their rationale was that life couldn't get any better than this, including one that just drove a car into a wall at 60 mph. Just beggars belief. Also I'm pretty sure that a football season in Columbia had to be abandoned in the late 80s due to drugs cartels killing referees! In fact the stuff that I've heard about Boca Juniors and River Plate in argentina are pretty horrific too.
The news about Bob Woolmer has been truly awful. Having followed cricket closely for many years and particularly in the subcontinent (I'm a huge fan of India and Dravid in particular), this whole incident, whilst a shock, is also bringing to the surface the sheer intensity of the following of cricket in both India and Pakistan.
On tennis message boards, there is often chat about how tennis is neglected (in the UK at least) in favour of football that rules everything. In India and Pakistan, it is cricket, and then a lot of daylight between that and the next sport. Forget the british imagery of a few watery eyed blokes falling asleep in their straw hats, club ties and deckchairs with wear applause for incoming/ outgoing batsmen. Cricket matches in India and Pakistan are noisier than football matches just about anywhere else! In India Eden Gardens (in Chennai/ Madras) holds about 100-115 thousand people. Michael Slater was opening batsman for Australia in the 90s/00s and at this ground he recalled that when he opened the batting for Australia, he could barely think because of the sheer noise! It has to be seen to be believed.
In the world cup in 2003, India were drawn to play Pakistan in the group stages. Huge match as relations between the two nations were hardly great, and at that time they had stopped playing cricket against each other because the political situation was dicey. Cricket was, as Harold Pinter once referred to it, 'Civilised Warfare'. India won that match thanks in part to an amazing innings from Sachin Tendulkar. Huge celebrations around India, and yet effigies were burned of the Indian Captain Sourav Ganguly because he had been out for a duck in the match, regardless of the fact that he had lead his side to a huge win!
After Pakistan's recent defeat to Ireland, people in Pakistan took to the streets shouting 'death to Woolmer', as well as making the same proclamations about some of the Pakistan players. After India's defeat to Bangladesh (which pretty much put them out of the world cup too), players' houses were stoned (and no doubt a few other bad things too). In fact at their next match against Bermuda, one fan's placard read 'India, beat Bermuda or we'll make sure that you stay in the West Indies' or words to that effect. Pretty chilling stuff.
To add to the mix there is also a huge amount of betting that goes on in India and Pakistan relating to the cricket. Betting is a huge pastime in many Asian countries, and when there is a lot of money riding on results, this certainly impacts peoples' behaviour. Rumours of match fixing are rife in cricket, and a few players have had their fingers burned in getting involved in this, notably South African playwers such as the late Hanse Cronje and Herschelle Gibbs with the latter optiing out of touring India as the police are lying in wait for him. It's also happened with Australian players, including Shane Warne, and Mark Waugh I think.
But this all serves as quite an unpleasant backdrop to what seems a relatively benign game. Forget the so-called pressures of being an England, Germany, Brazil manager in football. Being manager of India or Pakistan are surely the highest profile and highest pressure jobs in sport. You are talking about 1 billion people in India and 170 million in Pakistan with a sizeable proportion of those as huge cricket fans.
In terms of what I think has gone on with this terrible happening. is Bob Woolmer's planned autobiography anything to do with this, relating to the time when he managed South Africa (when the Cronje incident cast a huge shadow over the game too)? Who knows? The frightening thing is that whoever did this is likely to be someone that he knew, and certainly as a result of Pakistan losing both of their first two world cup games. There might have been sizeable money involved too, but I doubt that Woolmer was involved in any shady dealings. He may however be involved by association, simply by having been coach of 2 major test-playing nations. Cricket has a history of corruption, and this might well be an awful by-product of this, rather than some sort of horribly misplaced nationalism. Or might well be a mixture of the two.
This is a sizeable post here, but in the same way that DInky Jo knows her stuff with the cycling, I have also followed subcontinental cricket closely for a fair while, and given the high level of interest and posts here, thought I'd add a few words.
Here is a recent article on cricket in the subcontinent posted on cricinfo:
http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/286676.html