Inzamam-ul-Haq, rather than Bob Woolmer, controlled the national side, Shahryar Khan, the former chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, claimed yesterday. “The players all fell in place around him and Bob worked around this,” he said. “Bob felt he should have had full control and found it difficult if he was giving advice that may not have been accepted by Inzamam, who was the unquestioned leader spiritually and in cricketing matters.”

Woolmer probably would have concurred with that. It did not help that in much the same way that he could not fathom the complexities of Hansie Cronje’s inscrutable character, so he never properly understood Inzamam, who was questioned for a second time by police in Jamaica before being allowed to leave for London on Saturday evening. There were near-insurmountable cultural and religious differences between the coach and the Afrikaner and the Pakistani who led their sides as much in prayer as they did on the pitch.

Woolmer remained loyal to both his international captains, in public at any rate, and respected their strong beliefs. Indeed, he felt this strengthened their cricket and hence that of the players under them. Yet given how much of his time was spent touring with them, when there was a necessity to be in harmonious accord, such differences proved a drawback. Khan, whom Woolmer respected and liked, intimated as much yesterday.

When Woolmer took on the running of Pakistan in 2004, he admired what Inzamam had achieved without formal coaching and regarded him as one of the great batsmen of the present era as well as a talismanic leader. The main difficulty he had was over language. He spoke little Urdu and the captain had only a rudimentary grasp of English. By January of this year, he was saying in private that Pakistan would be a better team when their captain stood down, although if he had a replacement in mind, he did not mention him. Woolmer regarded him as possessing too much power, was too moody and that his leadership in the one-day game was inadequate.

After Pakistan’s poor tour to Australia in 2004-05, President Pervez Musharraf summoned coach and captain and told Inzamam to lead from the front. Woolmer, though, continued to believe he should be captain, for one reason in particular: the players responded to him. This was never more apparent than during the ball-tampering controversy in the match against England at the Brit Oval last year when the players, against the wishes of their coach, refused to go back on to the field. There was, as Khan said, frustration on Woolmer’s part that he could not exert full influence over the side, however much they may have listened to his technical points, but he was reconciled to it.

“Pakistan generally resembles a snake pit with the snakes continually crawling on top of each other and slithering about trying to get on top of each other,” Woolmer said during the winter. He liked the allusion, having read Snakes in Suits by Dr Robert Hare — a book concerned with psychopaths and manipulation without guilt. Nobody, Woolmer felt, trusted anybody else within the game in Pakistan.

Just as he had not interfered with the born-again Christianity of the South Africa side, so Woolmer was quick to appreciate the strength Pakistan derived from Islam. He did not dissuade Mohammad Yousuf from rising at 4am to say his prayers if that gave him the mental strength to score a century; similarly, he permitted Inzamam to organise prayers five times a day, even during the lunch and tea intervals in a Test match. He himself did not go to church but said shortly before the World Cup: “I suppose I have a belief in God.”

Woolmer also appreciated that the religion Inzamam brought to the side in a more overt way than his predecessors enabled the Pakistanis to be disciplined in their personal life. There was no need to impose curfews. The power that the captain exercised was also illustrated by his method of determining who should have a central contract, which Woolmer reckoned was the fairest he had encountered. This involved stacking up points based on Test and one-day appearances and benefited those (like Inzamam himself) who were the most experienced members of the side.

Did Woolmer like him? He did not say he did not. Their relationship was a more formal one that he would have had with, say, Chris Cowdrey or Dermot Reeve, when he coached Kent and Warwickshire, but that would have had something to do with East meeting West. There was a professional respect, certainly, but had Woolmer intended continuing as coach of Pakistan beyond the expiry of his contract in June, he might well have recommended a change of captaincy if Inzamam had not decided to stand down.

Team believed in power of prayer

Bob Woolmer wrote about the impact of their religious devotion on the Pakistan players in a column for The Times before the second Test at Old Trafford last July: “In Northampton, they were able to visit a mosque near the ground one lunchtime and promptly took a cluster of wickets straight afterwards.

“Their faith only bolsters their game, as was the case with the South Africa team under Hansie Cronje that I coached. They derive strength from prayers in the early morning, during the lunch and tea intervals and after the close of play. If I want to impart a point, I find there is still sufficient time to do so. I talk to them about their beliefs and they quiz me about mine. I tell them that cricket is my religion and I do not attend prayers with them, but I do have a belief in the existence of God.”

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