Neither drug-taking nor drug-testing in sport is perfect. Accidental use, casual use, unknowing use have all caused cases to fall apart.
Sri Lanka’s Kusal Perera was found to be producing a banned substance naturally in his body, and had his ban revoked; Pakistan’s Yasir Shah claimed he accidentally used his wife’s blood pressure medication and was given a three-month ban instead of two years. Casual users of recreational drugs do not even get on the radar.
For years, it was felt that drug use might actually work against performance in cricket. When the New Zealand club player, the medium pacer Adam King admitted to using nandrolone and testosterone “to put on lean and athletic muscle”, he found that “the excessive weight gain leading to a loss of agility and flexibility, and tendonitis in my knees was detrimental to my cricket.”
Yet with the rise of T20 cricket, the old biases do not hold any more. Power hitting can be boosted and sustained — leading, ultimately, to greater financial gains — in a format where delicacy, subtlety and touch play are no longer aspired to. To be effective is the goal, and anything that aids that objective is the temptation.
Which is why the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the National Anti-Doping Agency need to work out a formula by which cricketers are tested out of competition. The ‘whereabouts’ clause is the sticking point. It states that players have to inform NADA at the beginning of every quarter of the year, a location and time that they will be available for an hour each day for testing.
And frankly, the players have little faith that the information will be kept private. NADA will have to convince them that their systems are foolproof before it gets the players, and thus the BCCI, on board. The BCCI uses the International Drug Testing Management (Sweden) for its work, and probably sees no reason to switch agencies.
At the international level, there is no problem. In 2010, the BCCI influenced the ICC into establishing a category called the National Players Pool. Here, only the cricket whereabouts (rather than personal whereabouts) are necessary, and players can only be tested in a team environment, during tournaments or camps. The element of surprise — the key to catching a user off guard — was thrown out of the window.
Part of the BCCI’s lack of interest also has to do with the fact that cricket is not in the Olympics and so there is no compulsion to agree to the conditions set by NADA. The recent attempt by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to apply pressure on the Sports Ministry might not make any impression on the BCCI, therefore.
WADA, in a letter to sports minister Rajyavardhan Rathore, pointed out that if NADA loses accreditation as a result of not being able to test cricketers, it could affect Indian sport’s fight against doping, and affect other sports as there would be no accredited agency to test the athletes.
One of the unwritten rules of Indian sport is: if cricket comes on board, then the others will follow. That the sports ministry and the sports bureaucrats noticed only after the WADA letter that BCCI is not signatory to the NADA code indicates either laziness or hope that the BCCI will help them out of a corner.
In the larger picture, it cannot be denied that cricketers have a responsibility to ensure that their sport is drugs-free. If there is an element of entitlement about India’s opposition to NADA, then that body must explain the issues involved and instil confidence in the players.
Neither ego nor convenience should be allowed to stand in the way. It is unlikely that the iron glove will work as well as the velvet hand. Like the DRS which India resisted for long, it is not just good for sport, but necessary.
It could be useful for NADA too. If there are lacunae in its testing or arriving at conclusions, the BCCI has the resources to pursue the matter and ensure that NADA’s systems are above reproach. The BCCI does not consider itself a national sports federation, is not reliant on government funds, and therefore sees no reason to sign up with NADA. But that’s a narrow way of looking at it.
It has been a long held belief that cricket in general, and Indian cricket in particular does not harbour drug users. In 2013, though, Delhi medium pacer Pradeep Sangwan (Kolkata Knight Riders) was banned for 18 months after testing positive for stanozolol during the IPL.
In its 2016 report, WADA tested 153 cricketers and found one positive result. The player has not been named.
WADA’s pressure — the problem, after all, is at the domestic level — may or may not work. But to expect a cricket board which stonewalls the rulings of the Supreme Court to pay attention to an outside agency might be overly optimistic.
