Shield yourself if you can, Mark

By Kowalski

"When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
When in charge, ponder."

Well someone should have read out this Murphy's Law to Mark Shields when he started investigating Bob Woolmer's death.

The man is now set to become an international laughing stock for investigating a murder that probably never was and he has only himself to blame for it. After all, nobody asked him to go about giving interviews and fuel speculations while the investigations were on.

His self-contradictory statements, ruling nothing out -- from snake venom to weedkillers, from al Qaeda to Dawood Ibrahim, from diabetes to poisoned champagne -- made a tragic incident look ridiculous. The man's flip-flops damaged the reputations of Pakistani players, who are now hopping mad asking for legal action against Jamaica police.

The entire turn of events might sound hilarious now but imagine the trauma that Woolmer's family and friends have gone through all this while. Not to mention the numerous conspiracy theories that we were subjected to by the media.

But wait a second, Shields is not the only one to be blamed for perhaps one of the biggest international policing blunders in recent history.

I would say a certain Ere Sheshaiah seems to have gotten away with a faux pas of humongous proportions in this case.

For those not aware, he is the Jamaican pathologist of Indian origin who concluded that Woolmer died of manual strangulation.

After all Shields went by an expert report, which clearly stated that the cricket coach had been strangled to death.

But as Murphy's law stated "When in charge, ponder." Instead of being available to the media 24X7 and fuelling speculations, Shields could have taken some time out to think and think hard before calling Woolmer's death a murder.

Who knows perhaps that would have saved him the international humiliation that he will now be subjected to. So, as I see it, the probe may have been messed up by Sheshaiah's report but being the face of the investigation, Shields will be the one to pay the price for this bungle.

Image: muzikmedia.com