India's stand only hiccup in ICC progress - WADA

The World Anti-Doping Agency's director-general David Howman has said the ICC has made significant progress in implementing anti-doping measures in the last two years, with the BCCI's stance against the whereabouts clause the only "hiccup". Howman is scheduled to meet officials from the ICC and BCCI in Dubai on Wednesday to discuss the impasse over cricket's anti-doping policy.

"In the last 18 months they've [ICC] got rules, they've done testing, they're doing out-of-competition testing so in that brief period of time they have done a heck of a lot," Howman told sportal.co.nz. "The only hiccup they have had is the Indian board (BCCI) has said they are not comfortable with this 'whereabouts' requirement."

That clause - which the Indian board rejected three months ago, thereby stalling implementation of the anti-doping code - is expected to be focus of the Dubai meeting, where the BCCI will be represented by its president Shashank Manohar and secretary N Srinivasan.

"They [BCCI] have given a number of reasons and I am going to talk about those with them on Wednesday. Some of their concerns include an allegation that it [Wada's code] is unconstitutional in India," Howman said. "Well India signed on to the code as one of the first countries. The Indian Government is compliant so if there is part of India that is not compliant that is embarrassing for the government, particularly with things like the Commonwealth Games coming up."

The BCCI's primary concern with the whereabouts clause is that it could pose a security threat to its players. Howman, however, said that the WADA's system was so secure that even he did not have access to the location details and the ones who did had had thorough background checks. "I don't have access to that [athlete] information, so that shows how strong we are about it," Howman said. "We have four people in our organisation who have access. They have all been through full security, police checks and the like. So from my point of view there is nothing more that we can do."

"The whole system is good, the individuals receiving the information are secure and when the player puts this information in, the access to the information is restricted to those who need it, which would be us and the ICC. Nobody in India."

Howman had spent six months in 2009 speaking to athlete groups and showing them that the system was, in fact, a simple one. He acknowledged the need for WADA to spell out the requirements clearly, in order to avoid misinterpretation, before putting such systems in place.