BCCI still to act on IRTP demands

With June 1 deadline approaching, Board under ICC pressure to act on 'whereabouts'

Under the new anti-doping regulations in compliance with the World Anti Doping Agency’s (WADA) codes, the ‘whereabouts’ of eleven nominated cricketers — nine men and two women — from each of the eight member Boards must be made available to the ICC by June 1, 2009.

Additionally, staff of five member boards including India are yet to commence lodging Team Whereabouts in preparation for June 1. The other four are Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and the West Indies. While the BCCI has returned all eleven signed IRTP forms, the larger issue of training the players has been put on the back-burner, presumably because of the on-going Indian Premier League.
In all, 88 cricketers from eight countries — Australia, England and New Zealand completing the octet — are required to file ‘whereabouts’ information on a quarterly basis so that they can be located for out of competition testing.

In a letter to the chief exeuctives of the eight member Boards, ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat has expressed his concern that ‘some members may have not provided enough support to their players to ensure that they can meaningfully practice filing the required information during the trial period (June 1 to 30, 2009)’.

“This is essential so that they would not risk failure when the system goes live on July 1,” Lorgat has written. “With only 14 days remaining before the first deadline, I strongly urge you to ensure that this gets your urgent attention.”

Through their national Boards, cricketers have expressed concerns and reservations about the ‘whereabouts’, under which athletes must nominate an hour a day when they can be tested for 365 days a year, inclusive of holidays, competitions and travel, days on which it is difficult to be sure where they will be at any time.

Seeking to address those concerns, the ICC has made it clear that its testing programme would be ‘reasonable’ and that most of the out-of-competition testing would centre around when the players were travelling or training with their teams, and not when they are on holiday. At the same time, players will be tested out of competition too, the ICC added, not only to prevent doping practices in the off-season but also to ensure that injured players are tested, as are players who may not play as frequently as some of the others in the list and those about whom specific information may have been received by the world body.

Guaranteeing the confidentiality of information from the IRTP players, the ICC said its personnel with access to the ‘whereabouts’ were subject to binding confidentiality agreements, as were WADA and other relevant national or regional anti-doping organisations entitled to access the information provided by the cricketers.
DH News Service