NEW DELHI: The issue of getting Indian cricketers covered under the ambit of the National Anti Doping Agency (NADA) is expected to come up at the Mumbai meeting of the Committee of Administrators on 3 November, but reports indicate that the BCCI top brass is still reluctant to toe the line.
Most BCCI members, says a PTI report, believe that trying to get a Virat Kohli or Mahendra Singh Dhoni sign the ‘whereabouts clause’ is one of the main reasons behind NADA wanting BCCI to come under its wing.
The ‘wherabouts clause’ stipulated by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) stipulates that select athletes provide information about their location to either the International Sport Federation or National Anti-Doping Organization (NADA in this case). The names are then included in the respective registered testing pool as part of these top elite athletes’ anti-doping responsibilities.
The BCCI, which is not a National Sports Federation, is not a signatory to the NADA code and has instead hired Sweden’s International Drug Testing Management (IDTM) for testing work.
The issue reared its head last week when it emerged that the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) had written to the Sports Ministry and ICC asking it to direct BCCI to follow the Nada code. Earlier in the week, it was revealed that an Indian cricketer had tested dope positive in WADA’s 2016 report.
A senior BCCI official was quoted as saying, “We are under ICC, which is Wada compliant. At ICC events, our cricketers are tested by Wada. But since we are not a National Sports Federation (NSF), we are under no obligation to become Nada signatory.”
On Saturday, Rahul Bhatnagar, secretary, ministry of youth affairs and sports, had told the Indian Express that they had ordered Nada director general Naveen Agarwal to conduct dope tests during cricket tournaments – international and domestic. Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore has so far refused to comment on the issue.
