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.