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Journalism of Courage
Two top Pakistani pace bowlers — Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif — were arraigned on doping charges by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), and while Asif was banned from cricket for one year, Akhtar received a stiffer two-year penalty. Tests had proved that they had taken the banned performance-enhancing drug, Nandrolone.
On the face of it, this might appear to be a straightforward case of crime and punishment. However, an alternative argument takes shape if the events ahead of and around the doping scandal, and incidental to Champions Trophy matters, are considered.
The argument feeds on a few adherent issues. The first issue is money. Cricket is an enterprise that has seen considerably heightened investment and brand building activity of late. Apart from the sport itself becoming a brand, associated players have assumed iconic status, great wealth — and invite hubris.
The second issue is the system. The doping activity, in itself, isn’t the lag. That has come to be accepted as a professional hazard around the world. What disturbs is the basic apathy of the cricketing bosses in addressing the undeniable fact that doping is a possibility in this sport as well, and that it should be contained.
The malaise has grown out of general ignorance about doping and allied objectives like testing and avoidance. One has to remember that while each doping instance is pretty unique — in the way the doping has been done and in the drug used — it is also a generally accepted fact that doping cannot take place in the isolation and private confines of any one athlete’s/cricketer’s sphere. Most doping offences, say experts, have something to do with the system and administrative dispensation in place at the time. Shane Warne’s diuretic scandal (where he said his mother advised him to take a drug to reduce flab) could possibly be considered an exception to this!
The International Cricket Council (ICC) accepted the model WADA Code, and its affiliates were expected to adhere to it. Therein emerge the discrepancies. The PCB carried out pre-emptive, pre-departure tests on its cricketers. But WADA is against pre-departure screening. It believes that if an administration orders pre-emptive screening, then it has something to hide.
Interestingly, though, the ICC has washed its hands of this present scandal. Its chief executive, Malcolm Speed, is on record for stating that since the tests were done outside an ICC event, it would have nothing to do with it. This is like the International Olympic Committee or the International Association of Athletics Federations saying that they would remain mute and blind to any country initiating a dope test off-competition and off any of their own events. The logic is flawed.
What this does seem to reveal is that the ICC itself isn’t very aware of the rules that govern testing procedures, despite being a signatory to the WADA Code. Pakistan’s present Anti Doping Commission (ADC), under clause 5.7 of the PCB’s Anti Doping Regulations, is empowered to determine whether a person has committed a doping offence and the sanctions it would invite.
The manner in which the WADA Code is put into practice is stated in the official version. It says, “Signatories (International Federations of Olympic sports… and many other sports organisations) must ensure that their own rules and policies are in compliance with the mandatory articles and other principles of the Code.”
According to one report, although the ICC has signed up for the Code in July this year, “it admits the PCB has not had the time to amend its own rules to fall into line with WADA.” The weird inference being that the PCB is now left “free to impose any punishment they see fit (or not impose any) without fear of the decision being overturned.”
This loophole also allows personal preferences, such as coach Bob Woolmer’s unwillingness to have Shoaib Akhtar accompany the team. Woolmer has admitted that he was the one to persuade the system to order pre-emptive tests. It is in the interests of the PCB and ICC to override such temptations and adhere to the spirit of the law.
One can always read more into the bans. Read more into Shoaib Akhtar’s two years in exile. Read more into Pakistan’s palace intrigue. It was unusual, was it not, for General Pervez Musharraf, patron of the PCB, to announce that “no innocent player should be punished and players should be protected”? But that is cricketing lore. It hides more than it chronicles.
As for Akhtar, and Asif, it’s their own plain bad luck that did them in.
