Public reaction to doping scare was hard to deal with - Steyn
Dale Steyn says he was "very disappointed" at public reaction during his recent drug scare
Neil Manthorp
19-Aug-2009

Dale Steyn: "When I was first told that there was an adverse finding I thought it was a joke" • Getty Images
Dale Steyn has said he was "very disappointed" at public reaction during his recent drug scare and says that, though his name has been cleared after providing an adverse analytical finding during routine testing in the IPL, he fears some people will always associate him with illegal substance abuse.
"I kept being assured by our own team doctor that I had nothing to worry
about but everyone else's first reaction was to immediately think I'd done
something wrong," Steyn told Cricinfo. "People's reactions have probably
been the hardest thing to deal with.
"When I was first told that there was an adverse finding I thought it
was a joke. I actually laughed because as a professional cricketer I've been
always been really careful about what medicine I take. Then I was told that
this was going to a medical review committee and I got pretty scared. Maybe
there had been a mistake? Anyway, I'm happy that it's over now - even though
it should never have happened in the first place," Steyn said.
Many South African officials are still wary of speaking on the issue, given that it involves the powerful IPL, but the belief that Steyn was shabbily treated is clearly widespread. "He took a common headache medicine - Myprodol - containing codeine,
which is not a prohibited substance. In certain people codeine can cause a
high concentration of morphine in the urine. Anyone who has laboratory
experience in analysing this situation knows that a slightly higher presence
of morphine than otherwise permitted is totally acceptable where there is
also this level of codeine," one CSA official said.
South African Cricketers Association (SACA) chief executive Tony Irish was equally condemnatory of the laboratory. "This has been a nightmare situation where a laboratory's poor handling of a player's test sample has left a very unfair question mark over that player," he said.
"South Africa's Institute for Drug Free Sport is a very competent
organisation with established protocols and procedures. There is a fully
accredited laboratory in Bloemfontein which would have handled this whole
thing properly," Irish said. "It would have taken them a few hours to confirm that there
shouldn't even be an adverse analytical finding. It would have all been
quite normal. The Doping Control Laboratory used by IPL was an outsourced
commercial one located outside SA.
"Someone owes Dale Steyn a big apology."
Neil Manthorp is a South African broadcaster and journalist, and head of the MWP Sport agency