Montego Bay, June 12:

Former Pakistani cricket coach Bob Woolmer was not murdered but died of natural causes, Jamaican police said today.

Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) commissioner Lucius Thomas also ruled out match-fixing in relation to Woolmer’s death during the World Cup tournament in the Caribbean.

Foreign pathologists “concur with the view that Woolmer died of natural causes” while in further toxicology tests, “no substance was found to indicate that Woolmer was poisoned,” he said. “The JCF accepts these findings and has now closed its investigation into the death of Woolmer,” Thomas told a conference.

Commenting on allegations of match-fixing, he added that “neither the International Cricket Council nor the JCF have found any evidence of any impropriety by players, match officials nor management during the investigation of Bob Woolmer’s death.”

Woolmer, 58, died soon after being found unconscious in his hotel room in Jamaica on March 18 the day after Pakistan were knocked out of the cricket World Cup by Ireland.

An initial autopsy report proved inconclusive, but a pathology report later indicated he died of asphyxia as a result of “manual strangulation,” which led the police to treat the death as murder.

“The JCF adopted a thoroughly professional investigation where nothing was left to chance. Every effort has been made by the JCF to seek the truth surrounding Woolmer’s death,” Thomas said. “My hope is that despite the trauma of the last two and half months, Mrs (Gill) Woolmer and her sons will be confident that the JCF has done all it can to establish the truth surrounding the death of her husband.”