SYDNEY, 18 February 2003 — Former Test spinner and selector Peter Taylor was yesterday appointed to a three-strong panel which will adjudicate on Shane Warne’s positive drug test.
Taylor was named alongside Justice Glen Williams from the Queensland Court of Appeal and medical specialist Susan White on the Australian Cricket Board’s anti-doping panel to hear the eagerly-awaited case.
Warne will almost certainly be driven out of cricket if he receives the minimum two-year ban for testing positive for a banned diuretic, a stimulant which can also conceal the use of steroids.
The 33-year-old high-profile Australian leg-spinner was forced home last week from the World Cup in southern Africa and has been mounting his defense with legal representatives in the days since his return.
The Australian Cricket Board (ACB) said in a statement yesterday that it was yet to receive the result of Warne’s B sample drug test and so could not set a date for the panel hearing.
Australian Sports Drugs Agency (ASDA) chairman Brian Sando said last week that there was little chance of Warne’s B sample being free of drugs.
“Unfortunately for the athlete, it is very unlikely that specimen, which really is part of the original one, is going to show anything different from what the A sample has shown,” Sando said.
In another development yesterday, the ACB said Justice Bill Gillard from the Victorian Supreme Court, who was a member of the ACB’s previous two anti-doping committees, had ruled himself out of the Warne hearing. (AFP)
