Thursday night’s stunning revelation by Jamaican police that Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, found dead in his Kingston hotel room earlier this week, was murdered, has thrown a huge cloud over the World Cup.

And as shockwaves continued to reverberate around the Caribbean yesterday, nobody was more distressed than Bermuda’s own David Hemp.

While the Glamorgan skipper had played under the highly respected coach during his days at Warwickshire, he had got to know the former English batsman as much as a family friend as he had a work colleague.

He’d even stayed as a guest of Woolmer and his wife Gill at their home in South Africa.

Just a couple of weeks ago the two of them chatted and talked about old times before the World Cup opening ceremony.

Like others who knew Woolmer well, Hemp says he has no idea why anybody would want to murder him.

“Who’d want to kill him? We hear about certain things going on in cricket, but why a coach, he’s not on the field of play, he can’t control what’s happening out there,” said Hemp as he sat with team-mates watching yesterday’s match between Sri Lanka and India at the Queen’s Park Oval.

“For me that quashes that theory (match-fixing).

“Crazy supporters, people get irate, we see it in football in the UK, the fans get irate but they don’t go around killing people . . . I don’t know, I’m just lost for words. I don’t really know why anybody would want to kill him.”

The Bermuda bat, who topscored with an unbeaten 76 against India on Monday, said this World Cup would now likely be remembered for Woolmer’s death rather than anything that happened on the field.

“I think everybody was shocked inititially when they heard Bob had passed away but the fact that it’s been revealed he’s been murdered puts a completely different light on it.

“It was a sad loss anyway. I saw him in Jamaica at the opening ceremony, in fact in the afternoon before the ceremony we had about a 20-minute conversation about how things were going.

“He looked well, he felt good even though he’d had some health issues. He said he was looking forward to the competition.

“So when he passed away I was very shocked, now to find that he’d been murdered is terrible . . . obviously this World Cup will never be the same.

“This World Cup will be remembered for the murder of Bob Woolmer as opposed to the actual cricket.”

Hemp recalled that he got to know the coach well during his playing days at Warwickshire where they forged a lasting friendship.

“I met him in his second spell at Warwickshire in 2000, he was there for a couple of years. I left to go back to Glamorgan but I got to know him very well, better than most, because I was the vice-captain, I was in meetings with him every day.

“He’s such a great loss to the game, he was such a connoisseur of the game if you like. He loved the game.

“He always talked about the game, he always wanted to help players with their game . . . and he was always looking at new ways to make the game better, new strategies, new plans.

“That’s what made him such a great coach, as a player playing under him you never knew each day what to expect when you turned up at the ground . . . different fielding drills, different batting techniques, every day was different with Bob.

“As a player he made you look forward to going to the ground every day. Socially I knew him very well, we’d have dinner together and things like that.

“When Wales went to Cape Town on tour, I ended up staying with him at his house. I was doing exams at the time and I didn’t want to be led astray, so he offered me an apartment at the bottom of his garden which he let me stay in.

“I ended up staying there for a while because I needed to study. I got to know his wife (Gill), she used to come and pick up my washing . . . it’s just unbelievable we’re now hearing he’s been murdered.”