The drug tests scandal

Was the substance abuse intentional?

Osman Samiuddin

October 17, 2006

What will now happen to Mohammad Asif? For someone who showed so much promise there is genuine sorrow following the latest developments © Getty Images

It's not funny anymore. There's not been any lack of sniping and sniggering at Pakistan's propensity for chaos over the last couple of months. Two captaincy switches in two days and one change of administrative head? That was just our unique three-day preparation camp for the Champions Trophy. Ball tampering crisis? That's old hat my friend. First-ever forfeiture of a Test match? Well, I mean, someone had to be a pioneer.

But yesterday, all the drama, the farce and the crap of the last two months tunneled into pure tragedy. Now lie in possible ruins the careers of two men; if there can ever be a sustained peak to something as disturbed and interrupted as Shoaib Akhtar's career, arguably it was now. And it isn't often that so little doubt exists, globally, about the magnificent prospects of as fresh a fast bowler as Mohammad Asif. In not knowing what will happen to them now, there is genuine sorrow.

Until and unless both protest, or the PCB drugs tribunal comes to a definitive conclusion, it is difficult to say much. Certainly, the case against both appears solid. Both have bulked up their bodies, very publicly, in recent times though it must be stressed that both are devoted gym-goers. Both have also been rehabilitating from injuries and the one thing even all non-medicos know about Nandrolone now is that it builds muscle and can aid recovery from injury.

In particular, around Shoaib there is also circumstantial evidence, a gentle breeze of rumour from the last six months. Some hacks and ex-cricketers now claim suspicion has lurked for the last two years. Shaharyar Khan, freshly ex-ed as chairman PCB, confirmed to an Indian news channel that Shoaib was a worry for them with regards to doping for some time. Now here's something; an ex-chairman of Pakistan cricket believes that a star player may have been pushing the legalities of medicinal use yet chooses to do nothing about it until the dying days of his regime. If it damns Shoaib, it damns Shaharyar's own administration many times over.

Shaharyar's inaction is emblematic of the culpability of the PCB as a generic organization. Rather than smugly patting their own back for having, in effect, acted with delayed alacrity (if Shaharyar as chairman suspected something, why the delay in action?), they should examine their own roles. One official claimed yesterday that information is regularly provided to players and booklets are handed out. Is it enough? Given that Pakistani players struggle with even the rules of the game they play - case in point, Inzamam-ul-Haq - it most certainly isn't. The onus, in fact, is on the board to make sure their players do not only receive information but comprehend its implications, as appears apparent in the policies followed by boards in Australia and Sri Lanka for instance.

Ultimately, it doesn't stretch the bounds of logic to assume that dietary control, training regimes, fitness maintenance and particularly the rehabilitation of a player from injury is as much the responsibility of the board as it is of the player. Younis Khan alluded to as much in his press conference yesterday. Admittedly some players, like Shoaib, pose more difficult questions than others. By choosing his own personal doctors in the past and consulting them regularly, he chipped away at the board's role in such affairs. And realistically, if reluctantly, it has to be acknowledged that if a player wants to mess around, there is little the board can do to stop him, save carrying out regular dope tests to find him out.

For the tribunal is now left with the question of intent. Did either player knowingly use the substance or were they unaware that they had been administered it? Medical research and theory suggests that the latter scenario might still be possible to prove. If not, then for a game so at odds with much of international sport, this heralds an unfortunate entry into current sporting ethos, where drug misuse is reality.

The pressure of modern-day sports, on athletes, cyclists, boxers, weightlifters, gymnasts, footballers, has been enough in the past to nudge them to substance abuse; cricket has survived it by and large thus far and it may yet do but it is unlikely to be completely immune to it. In a very twisted way, it is almost reassuring to see the ills of modern sport present in cricket as well. It further chips away at the game's pomposity, humanizes it even. Above all, it now alerts cricket's authorities to be better prepared for the future. But looked at in any other way, it is a tragedy, nothing less.

Osman Samiuddin is Pakistan editor of Cricinfo

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