Police investigating the murder of Bob Woolmer are to order a second post-mortem examination to guard against claims that the first report alleging strangulation is defective.

The move came as Woolmer’s personal effects were released to his wife in South Africa, apart from his mobile phone and laptop computer, which were being examined for possible clues as to who killed the Pakistan cricket coach.

Mark Shields, the Deputy Commissioner of Jamaican police, said that a second post mortem would preempt likely claims by a defence lawyer at a murder trial that the local pathologist who concluded that Woolmer was throttled had made mistakes. “If we arrest someone and charge them, the defence counsel will want a second post mortem,” Mr Shields said.

By ordering a follow-up examination now, probably by flying in a pathologist from the US, Mr Shields will be able to release Mr Woolmer’s body for burial in South Africa without waiting for an inquest, which could be weeks away.

It also removes the possibility of having to exhume the body if a defence team tries to cast doubt on the findings of Ere Seshaiah, the Kingston pathologist who concluded that Woolmer was killed by “manual strangulation”.

Although there is no evidence that Mr Seshaiah bungled the post mortem, allegations have been privately levelled by former Test players in the Caribbean and officials of the International Cricket Council that Woolmer, 58, was in fact not murdered but died of natural causes.

Asked about these claims, Mr Shields said that he was in possession of evidence from the crime scene that had not been made public and that made murder a certainty. “There is very clear evidence of murder,” he said.

Woolmer, a former England Test player, was found murdered in his hotel bedroom hours after Pakistan had been knocked out of the Cricket World Cup by Ireland.

Most of the Pakistani team left London yesterday to fly home. Angry fans greeted vice-captain Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf in Karachi.

In Kingston, Mr Shields gave warning that there could be no quick solution to the case. He added that Jamaican officials were poring over hours of closed-circuit TV footage taken from Woolmer’s 12th-floor bedroom, “frame-by-frame”.

Mr Shields said that match fixing was just one avenue of inquiry. He added: “I know a lot more about match fixing than I did a week ago.”