Piper pleads guilty at ECB hearing

Keith Piper has pleaded guilty to a charge of taking cannabis, after appearing before an ECB disciplinary panel in Manchester. At Piper's request sentence was adjourned until May 26, 2005, but in the interim he has been suspended from participation in all forms of cricket that fall under the jurisdiction of the ECB.

Piper, a Warwickshire stalwart for the past 16 years, was summoned before the panel, which consisted of Gerard Elias QC, Alan Wadey and Richard Bevan of the Professional Cricketers' Association, after failing a drugs test during Warwickshire's Championship match against Hampshire at Edgbaston on April 14.

If the panel finds against him, it would in all likelihood signal the end of Piper's career. He is 35 and has a previous offence behind him - he failed an internally-conducted drugs test in 1997 and served a one-match ban.

Piper is the third Warwickshire player to be in such a position - Paul Smith and Graham Wagg have also served drugs-related bans, and as a consequence, Dennis Amiss, the club's chief executive, is also coming under scrutiny for the club's stance. Last season Wagg was given a 15-month ban by the ECB after testing positive for cocaine, and suffered a double blow when his Warwickshire contract was duly terminated.

The Birmingham Post, which broke the story on Saturday, claimed that the drugs policy the club promised to introduce after the Wagg incident has never materialised, adding that while a firm was hired to construct a policy, the county have not reacted to the draft proposal sent to them before Christmas.