The Hindu : Sport : Time ICC fell in line with the rest

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Wednesday, Jul 04, 2007
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Time ICC fell in line with the rest

K.P. Mohan

GENERAL / CAS panel does not spare ICC, PCB

PCB maintains that is an ‘internal matter’
ICC must amend its rules and join other federations

NEW DELHI: Pakistan Cricket Board Chief Nasim Ashraff has been quoted as saying that his Board’s stand had been vindicated following the dismissal of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the Shoaib Akhtar-Mohammad Asif doping case.

Far from vindicating the PCB position, the CAS panel which ruled that it had no jurisdiction to intervene in a decision handed out by PCB’s appeals committee, has slammed the PCB as well as the International Cricket Council (ICC) for framing rules that lead to such situations.

Hampered

In its concluding remarks while dismissing the WADA appeal, CAS stated: “The panel reaches this conclusion with some considerable regret. The fight against doping will be severely hampered if international federations, such as the 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.

“That decision 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, and with the WADC (world anti-doping code) which is to the same effect.”

The PCB appeals committee had accepted the plea of the players that they had taken food supplements and were unaware whether such supplements were contaminated with steroids (in this case nandrolone) and that they had not taken any banned substance knowingly and they were never warned by the PCB in these matters.

The appeals panel reversed the decision of an earlier panel that had banned Akhtar for two years and Asif for one year.

Inadequate rules

From the beginning it was clear that the ICC rules were inadequate to deal with the situation since they pertained only to ‘ICC events’ and not out-of-competition testing. The PCB, on its part, maintained that it was an ‘internal matter.’

CAS found that it had no jurisdiction since PCB rules did not have a provision of appeal to CAS and ICC rules were silent on out-of-competition testing. Yet, CAS made it clear who was at fault and whether the ‘reprieve’ given to the players was in order or not.

Where does ICC go from here? Even as it talks of being unrelenting in its anti-doping stance and urges member nations to have its own testing programme, it has to amend its rules to fall in line with major international federations.

Says CAS in its decision: “It is the responsibility of the ICC to ensure that its members promulgate anti-doping rules which are consistent with the WADC, and which enable either the ICC or its member or WADA to appeal against what might be termed ‘rogue’ decisions. Other international federations have such provisions in their anti-doping rules. Equally, ICC members should ensure that their anti-doping rules enable appeals to be made against such decisions either by the member itself, by the ICC, or by WADA.”

WADA-compliant

Mr. Ashraff has been quoted by Cricinfo as saying that the PCB had “adopted a WADA-compliant policy” at its last Board meeting.

At the time when Akhtar and Asif tested positive in October last year, the PCB had claimed it was “WADA-compliant”. The ICC had also claimed that it too was “WADA-compliant.”

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