Pakistan fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif escaped an International Cricket Council drugs test when they were not selected for the Cricket World Cup, ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed said today.The players were withdrawn from the Pakistan team a day after Speed issued a statement that target testing would be done at the World Cup, naming the two bowlers. According to the Pakistan board, the players were withdrawn because of injuries.Commenting after an ICC board meeting in Cape Town, Speed said: “If they had been selected the intention was that those players would have been target tested. The fact that they weren’t selected means that they won’t be tested. The target testing will continue but it will involve other players.”Speed said he did not wish to “telegraph punches” by indicating how many or which players would be targeted in addition to the ICC’s normal random testing for banned substances.Asked whether Akhtar and Asif would be required to undergo tests before playing further international cricket, Speed said the ICC did not have the power to test players outside of ICC events. “The next ICC event (after the World Cup) is the Twenty20 world championships in South Africa in September and I can’t speculate on that.”Both players tested positive for nandrolone in tests done in Pakistan before the ICC Champions Trophy last year. They were withdrawn from the team for the tournament. Speed said: “Earlier in the week we announced that ICC would target test at the World Cup. This is the first time we will have done that. We’ll go ahead and do that in any event.”Speed said there were no plans to broaden the scope of ICC dope testing but he said all member countries of the ICC were required to be compliant with the code of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) within four years. The ICC joined WADA last year.
