A drug bust in cricket was long overdue, according to some cricketers I have met over the last couple of days. “There is so much at stake for these guys, so much to prove, so much to gain that something like this was inevitable,” said a former cricketer.
Perhaps. For instance, if a fast bowler is assured half-a-million dollars for clocking say 170 kmph, it is not incomprehensible that he would go to great lengths to win that reward. There is so much commerce driving cricket that some values and rules will be bent.
Even so, the timing of the leaked report indicting Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif is intriguing. Just a day before Pakistan is to play its first match in the Champions Trophy? I also found the statement of the former PCB chief Shahryar Khan baffling. If indeed the establishment had been suspecting for some time that Shoaib was into hanky-panky, why was he not tested for drugs yet? At the best of times, Pakistan cricket has been like a minefield, and this is a particularly volatile time. Only recently, a new regime was set up in controversial circumstances.
That said, the use of banned substances by cricketers must be dealt with seriously. Some argue that performance-enhancing drugs may have little value in a sport fundamentally driven by skills and aptitude. For instance, if a fast bowler improves his speed by 20-25 kmph through steroids, he may still not be able to take wickets. This argument is specious, of course.
Steroids help build stamina, which could allow a fast bowler to continue for, say, 20 overs on the trot at the same speed. This is unfair advantage. If not helpful in getting wickets, extra speed could pose a danger to life and limb.
The biggest issue, however, is the well-being of the sportspersons themselves. Drugs can enhance performance, but they can also kill. The example of Florence Griffith Joyner is too stark and too recent to be forgotten. She was the sprint queen of the world following the Seoul Olympics in 1988. By 1998, she was dead.
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Mohammed Yousuf’s flowing, foot-long beard stands apart from anything else seen on a sports field, though cricket lore is full of wonderful stories about WG Grace who wore a similar appearance in his playing days. In his autobiography Life Worth Living, CB Fry relates this wonderful anecdote about Grace and his famous beard:
“…we all remembered a certain match at Sheffield Park in 1896. This was the first match played that year by the Australian team captained by GHS Trott, and it included the redoubtable Ernest Jones, whose first appearance it was. In that match, WG went in first with Arthur Shrewsbury. I was playing too, and I vouch to you that it is true that in the first over a ball from Ernest Jones did go through WG’s beard, and that WG did rumble out a falsetto, ‘What — what —what!’ Shortly after, he was dismissed.”
Food for thought for fast bowlers up against the prolific Yousuf, wot?
