ANTI DOPING

Director General of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) David Howman lavished

praise on the ICC for its effort to free cricket from
performance-enhancing drugs.

Speaking at a WADA symposium held for the world’s sports media in Lausanne, Switzerland this week, Howman said ICC did a commendable job by uniting the cricket world against drugs.

“We are substantially encouraged and I think the progress that has been made, even in the last four or five months has been significant,” Howman was quoted as saying by an ICC statement.

“The ICC has done a huge amount in this area, both from a leadership point of view in becoming code compliant and in terms of bringing in some of the countries that we know are pretty difficult to run anti-doping programmes in.

“If you put all that together, that is great progress and we have worked together with some people who have been responsible for that and we are heartened by their commitment,” the WADA chief said.

Howman also took the occasion to warn that the sporting community in general could never drop its guard in the war against drug cheats.

“I think we win a lot of battles and the more battles you win the closer you are to winning the war,” Howman said.

“(But) in every aspect of society you are going to find a few cheats. We find them in the legal profession or journalistic profession and so on. There are much fewer drug cheats in sport now than 10 years ago,” he said.

The ICC became a signatory of WADA in July 2006 and has been testing at its events since 2002.