Warne the magician puts the wand away

It was a sad day in the history of cricket. On the 21st of December, 2006, one of cricket’s all time best, Shane Warne announced his plans to retire from test cricket after the ongoing Ashes series which Australia lead by 3-0. His departure from test cricket will end a remarkable 15 year career, which will always be cherished both at home and abroad. Warne, like Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar has a huge fan base around the world.
Warne revolutionized the art of leg-spin bowling with his huge armory of deliveries which have left the best batsmen bamboozled at times. He made his international debut in Test cricket during the third test against India in 1992. Although he started off poorly, he was endowed with immense talent and it was only time before he began decimating batting orders around the world. He has scalped a staggering 700 wickets from 143 test matches, with 36 five-fors at an average of just over 25; a phenomenal achievement.

During the 70s and the 80s, the world of cricket spiraled around fast bowling, which was what brought about the majority of the excitement. Warne changed that notion forever with his prodigious talent for spinning the ball into oblivion. Before Australia lost the safe hands of Ian Healy to retirement, Warne and he made a deadly combination. They had an excellent coordination and many times Healy positioned himself to receive stray deliveries from Warne that were meant to discombobulate the batsman.

Like any popular star, Warne was always surrounded by controversies and rumors. In 1998, Warne admitted to have taken money to provide details to a man who was linked to bookmakers. In 2003, shortly before the commencement of the world up, Warne was sent back home after failing a drug test. He faced a two year ban if charged guilty of the offense to which he pleaded ignorance. However, he was found guilty by the Australian Cricket Board’s drug code and banned for a period of 12 months. In addition, Warne is known for passing scathing remarks towards other players, including, but not limited to Arjuna Ranatunga (former Sri Lankan captain) and Kim Hughes (former Australian captain).

Warne will always be remembered as the ‘spin doctor’ or ‘spin maestro’ and it will be difficult for Australia or world cricket to find a replacement for ‘the master’. Despite all the controversies, the ups and downs in his career, Warne has managed to gain the respect of the greatest batsmen from around the world. He will however, continue to play for Hampshire for another two years, so to all his fans; catch him there while you can, and observe the spin guru work his magic.

Whose fault is it anyway?

Unsurprisingly, the PCB and the Pakistani players are in the limelight once again, a pattern that has become all too familiar in recent times. Over the past year, the Pakistani cricket team and its officials have been riding a rollercoaster of controversy.

It started off when Afridi was caught on camera, tampering the pitch during the second Test against England at Faislabad . Next, umpire Daryl Hair implicitly accused the Pakistani team of tampering with the ball, which subsequently ended Hair’s international career.

Soon after, Akhtar was caught on camera, apparently scuffing up the ball, which – fortunately for him - was overlooked in the heat of the Oval test controversy. Yet another drama was to follow, when Shahryar Khan was relieved of his position, and Younis Khan, who was handed the captaincy, renounced it on the basis of being deemed a ‘puppet captain’, only to be reinstated a few days later.

Now, another scandal has surfaced; Shoaib Akhtar, no stranger to controversy, and a naïve looking Asif being formally charged and banned for willingly, or inadvertently consuming a banned substance called Nandrolone. Apparently, the drug test was administered and dealt with internally, by the PCB. A three member committee was formed, which after some research, advice from lawyers, physiotherapists, and trainers resulted in a two year ban for Akhtar and one year for Asif.

The apparent disparity in the verdict for the two players was justified by the fact (according to three-member panel) that Akhtar was already educated – to some extent – as far as consuming performance enhancing drugs and other contrabands is concerned. A few weeks later, another three-member panel consisting of three new officials was formed.

As one would have expected, the second committee nullified the ban of the first panel by reversing the ban and dropping all charges against the accused. Their reasoning was based one the discrepancy between the drug policies of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and the PCB. The previous panel had banned the two players under WADA regulations, which the second panel disagreed with (2 – 1) since the matter was officially considered a PCB issue. They argued that the two players should have been tried under PCB’s own drug laws since it was an internal affair, which is a fairly reasonable argument.

Unfortunately, PCB’s drug policies are a world apart from WADA regulations, which means that it is incumbent upon the world cricketing’s ruling body to enforce those laws upon the various members of the organization. This incident may well be a wake up call to the wealthy ICC officials sitting in Dubai about the importance of being vigilant on the topic of drugs in sports. Nearly all other international sports strictly abide by the code of conduct outlined by WADA and it is now ICC’s duty to follow suit. Before any cricketing body can formally charge a player for consuming ‘banned substances’, it must be clearly, and legally informed to all players exactly what is and what is not acceptable – as far as the players’ diet is concerned.

As with any other organizational topology, the WADA and its members must follow a top-to-bottom business structure. WADA must provide its members an unambiguous book of laws governing drugs – that is their primary function after all. Its members – let us consider the ICC for the sake of adhering to our discussion – must then relay these rules and regulations to its own members, i.e., the governing bodies of each nation. It is then up to these cricketing boards to ensure that their players are duly informed and educated on banned substances and the consequences of breaching the law.

Once the players have been educated, and then if an offense is committed, should an individual be held responsible for any drug related offenses. The banner of ‘ignorance is not an excuse’ that higher officials use to justify their judgment is completely erroneous in my view. There are hundreds of chemicals available openly in the market, and if a sportsman tries to better themselves through their use in the competitive world of sports, mind you, without knowing what harm it may do to them, then I believe they are innocent.

WADA has declared that they will pursue and question the decision to absolve Akhtar and Asif of the initial charges. Instead, what they should be doing is reprimanding ICC for not doing enough to ensure that such a mockery of the international drugs law in sports doesn’t take place in the first place. I believe that no one person or organization can be completely blamed in this case, and instead of pointing fingers, WADA, the ICC and all its members should be working cohesively to identify and tackle the root of all the trouble that this incident has caused – better education and inter-communication between all departments involved.

At the end of the day, Asif and Akhtar will have to live with the stigma of being branded as cheats; with or without knowledge, because apparently, ignorance is not an excuse.