Cock up or cover up?

What is the real story behind Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif? © AFP

Here's a riddle. Two players test positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone. Both claim ignorance, are found guilty (as ignorance is no defence anywhere) and banned. Both appeal. At no stage does either deny that the test findings were inaccurate, thus implicitly accepting that steroids were present in their bodies. Both have their bans completely overturned. How? A proviso (and a clue): all this occurred in Pakistan cricket.

After Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif had tested positive in internal dope tests, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had acted with impressive speed in calling both back from the Champions Trophy in October. The tests had been internally conducted, a small feather in a raggedy cap because if the previous administration had taken note of speculation (growing for around a year) about Shoaib's use of steroids they might have acted sooner.

Within a week, a three-man committee was constituted to investigate charges against both. The players were advised to hire lawyers but didn't and by November 1, still only a fortnight after the story broke, Shoaib was banned for two years and Asif one. It sounded about right: ignorance of the law, the committee argued, was no defence.

Then the mess began to unravel. Intikhab Alam, a former Pakistan Test captain and a member of the disciplinary committee, announced that Shoaib had been made an example: a sophisticated man with an "active sex life", and a drinker, he could be expected to be aware of the perils of drugs. This immediately cast doubts over the credibility of the committee. Then mutterings emerged from legal quarters about the workings of the committee: what authority did a quasi-legal tribunal have, what legal code were they acting under, and were they really as independent from the PCB as they claimed to be?

Probably they were, for it was to emerge later that Dr Nasim Ashraf, the newly installed chairman of the PCB, had sent a letter to the head of the committee, Shahid Hamid, days before the verdict. Hamid claimed the letter was an attempt to put pressure on him to exonerate the players. Ashraf denied the accusation. Whatever the contents of the letter it didn't work - the players were found guilty.

But a right of appeal was allowed, and exercised. And on December 5 a three-man appeal committee in effect completely rubbished the findings of its predecessor by a 2-1 vote, amid winks, nudges and shouts of "whitewash!" The rumours were loud: President Musharraf had intervened, the PCB had, Tauqir Zia (a former PCB chairman and supporter of Shoaib) had pulled in favours. It wasn't lost on people that Justice Fakhruddin Ebrahim, a prominent retired judge, had headed the appeal committee. He was referred to as the PCB's "go-to guy" by a local journalist because he can make inconveniences go away, as he had done while heading an inquiry into Pakistani match-fixing which found Salim Malik innocent of all charges.

Shoaib Akhtar is current out with injury, but a review panel could still ban both players © AFP

Officially, the exoneration resulted from a legal loophole. Because the testing had been done internally, it stood to reason that action should have been taken under the PCB's anti-doping policy and not (as the first committee had done) under the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) code. Under the PCB policy, ignorance of the law can be an excuse. That isn't surprising, say lawyers who were involved in the appeal, for the policy is ambiguous, vague and poorly drafted. Ashraf acknowledged that the policy - instituted as far back as 2002, in itself a worthy feat - had to be brought in line with the WADA code, which was adopted by the ICC only recently. Official or unofficial, the not-guilty verdict reeked.

One member of this appeal committee, Danish Zaheer, a sports-medicine expert, strongly disagreed with the verdict, enough to provide an 11-page note of dissent with the report. He echoed what many thought: the whole process, right from the testing to the findings, was gravely flawed. But whispers that he had initially offered to defend Shoaib and Asif from the charges, for an extravagant amount of money, also began filtering out. Confused?

The ICC is embarrassed, WADA annoyed. The ICC has said it can take no action as the matter was an internal one for the PCB. But WADA has lodged an appeal with an international court of arbitration against the overturning of the ban, arguing that since Pakistan as a country is a signatory to their code, so too should its sporting bodies. The ICC has promised support. The case is expected to take four months, though the PCB staunchly maintains the matter is closed. Asif and Shoaib, meanwhile, play on, but for how long? Therein lies another riddle.