MUMBAI: The tremendous international clout that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) purportedly wields, much to the envy of other cricketing bodies, is being put to its severest test, as it stands alone in its opposition to signing ICC’s anti-doping code.
The objection to the code has come from leading Indian cricketers and they have the full backing of the BCCI.
The ICC has drawn the code from the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) and insists that all member-countries, except India, have signed the same.
WADA, formed in 1999, promotes, coordinates, and monitors the fight against doping in sport in all its forms.
Their new “whereabouts” clause requires players to inform ICC, 90 days in advance (each quarter) a location and time that they will be available each day in that quarter for testing.
If the player is not in the location at the time specified, he/she will have a strike recorded against his/her name. Three such strikes and the player will have breached the code and can face penalties up to a two-year ban.
The Indian cricketers find this “whereabouts” clause to be unreasonable. But experts in sports medicine argue that this is now a standard procedure to root out the menace of doping.
Do India’s cricketers have a fair point? They are not the only ones who have led an outcry against the “whereabouts” clause. Superstars such as Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams have been its vociferous critics.
“I was with my friends. Then I had a bath and my mother called me. She told me the guys were in my house in Madrid. It was my only free evening. I had to take this anti-doping control. I don’t think this is a right thing to do.
Tennis star Serena is equally angry, saying: “I think it’s too much. It’s very invasive. Basically, they show up at your house on any day.”
Football’s governing body, FIFA is still not completely WADA-compliant due to similar concerns.
“The Whereabouts Info must be provided by the player, whether playing, training, traveling or on holiday. Most international teams and players don’t like this one bit,” a FIFA spokesman has said.
According to the BCCI, it had no issues with random testing during a tournament, but it was not comfortable with the idea of out-of-competition tests. “As long as they want to test players during a competition, we would abide by all WADA rules. But outside the tournament, we think the players should be exempted.
It is not only a question of the cricketers’ privacy but also a matter of their security over which no advanced information cab be given. It wants the ICC to evolve a cricket-specific code.
As of now, the BCCI stands alone, but cricketers from some other countries may fall in line.
