WADA to contest overturn of drug ban

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has decided to challenge the Pakistan board's decision to overturn the bans imposed on Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif for testing positive for nandrolone, a banned substance.

WADA will approach the Court of Arbitration in Lausanne, Switzerland, and contest the decision on the ground that Pakistan is a full member of the ICC which in turn is a signatory to the anti-doping code laid down by the WADA.

Dick Pound, the WADA chairman, said that since both Shoaib and Asif did not ask for their B samples to be tested it meant that they had accepted the result of the initial test. "The Pakistan Cricket Board [PCB] simply did not apply the code," Pound told BBC Sport.

Shoaib and Asif tested positive after an internal dope test was carried out by the Pakistan board just before the Champions Trophy in October. A three-man tribunal banned Shoaib for two years and Asif for one year in November but by December the appeal committee overturned the ban on the ground that neither player had been warned or cautioned against taking supplements.

Nasim Ashraf, the PCB chairman, refused to respond saying, "No comment. As far as we are concerned, the matter is now closed." Pound, responding to a similar comment by Ashraf earlier, said that it was the WADA's job to monitor compliance with the anti-doping code. "In cases of that nature, there are sanctions that are meant to be applied and in our view they have been improperly applied.

"You cannot have in an anti-doping system an individual national federation purporting to act without regard to the rules of the international federation which has adopted the code."

He said that the agency would appeal to the CAS to deal with the case expeditiously but was fairly certain that the two players would get to play in the World Cup in March as such cases took months rather than weeks to be sorted.

Pound criticised the ICC for being indecisive about the matter adding that if the WADA managed to contest the ban successfully then it would be considerable embarrassment to the ICC for not acting promptly. "The ICC doesn't seem to be entirely clear which way it wants to go, so rather than wait and possibly have the thing fall between stools, we're going to exercise our responsibility under the code - we do not think the proper result has been achieved to date."