Medindia LOGIN REGISTER
Medindia

Anti-doping Rules Must Avoid Unsatisfactory Decisions: WADA

by VR Sreeraman on Jul 6 2007 3:40 PM

Criticising the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for not incorporating effective anti-doping rules, the World-Anti Doping Agency (WADA) has said that the fight against doping will be severely hampered if this is not take care of.

“The fight against doping will be severely hampered if the International Cricket Council (ICC) and national governing bodies such as the PCB do not ensure that their anti-doping rules are able to avoid unsatisfactory decisions as the majority decision of the PCB Appeals Committee in this case,” a WADA spokesman told a foreign news agency.

The criticism comes days after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that it did not have the jurisdiction to deal with the steroids case of Pakistani bowlers Shoaib Akthar and Mohammad Asif.

“We regret the absence of jurisdiction of CAS in this specific case, but note with satisfaction that the CAS panel considered the exoneration of the two cricketers by the PCB Appeals Committee as an unsatisfactory decision,” WADA added.

Reacting to the claims made by Shoaib and Asif that they took the banned steroid nandrolone unwittingly, the world anti-doping body said the lifting of the ban was “inconsistent with a long and invariable line of CAS’s decisions which hold that it is the athlete’s duty to ensure that what he or she ingests does not contain a prohibited substance.”

It went on to appeal to the ICC to bring in anti-doping rules that allow all members and WADA to appeal against “what might be termed as rogue decisions,” the Daily Times reported.

“We are now looking forward to the full implementation of the World Anti-Doping Code by the ICC (which adopted the code in July 2006) and its national associations at the earliest, and to pursuing its cooperation with the ICC in the fight against doping in sport,” WADA said.

Advertisement
Early this week, CAS ruled with some “considerable regret” that it has no jurisdiction to take up an appeal filed by the WADA in this regard.

The CAS said that the appeal filed by the WADA on December 21, 2006 is “inadmissible,” as there is no specific agreement between the parties (ICC, PCB and CAS) to allow it to rule on the merits of this particular dispute.

Advertisement
WADA had filed an appeal with the CAS against a decision of the PCB Appeals Committee that Akhtar and Asif did not commit a doping offence under PCB Regulations, and that the sanctions imposed on the bowling duo by a previous committee should be set aside.

On 14 September 2006, the then Chairman of the PCB directed that doping tests may be carried out on all 19 players being considered for inclusion in the Pakistani Cricket Team participating in the ICC Champions Trophy.

The PCB’s Anti Doping Officer had carried out doping tests of 19 players in September last year, in which Akhtar and Asif were found positive of taking Norandrosterone, a metabolite of nandralone.

Source-ANI
LIN/M


Advertisement