By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
It has now been revealed that the South African pacer Kagiso Rabada tested positive for cocaine and that the involvement of his legal team avoided him a lengthy doping ban and absence from the field.
According to Rapport, the urine sample Rabada provided on 21 January after MI Cape Town’s SA20 match against Durban’s Super Giants at Kingsmead showed traces of benzoylecgonine (BZE), a metabolite of cocaine.
Rabada’s legal team was able to prove that he had used the cocaine out of competition as the concentration was less than 1,000 nanograms per millilitre, indicating the use of cocaine, but not on the day of the test.
Rabada also declined the option of having his B sample tested.
He didn’t contest the finding and waived the right for a B-sample to be analysed, clearly knowing he was responsible.
So when Rabada heard of the outcome of his test conducted by Saids, a legal process kicked in.
And because South African players are well represented by the South African Cricketers’ Association, Rabada was able to mobilise significant legal and medical resources to prove that this was a regrettable mistake.
“He was smart to go down that route,” Khalid Galant, CEO of the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport (Saids) said. “If you know you did it, it saves you time and legal fees.”
Rabada left the Gujarat Titans squad in early April for “personal reasons” having played just two matches in the IPL, before admitting to failing a drug test.
“I am deeply sorry to all those that I have let down,” he said in a statement. “I will never take the privilege of playing cricket for granted. This privilege is much larger than me. It goes beyond my personal aspirations.”
After serving his one-month suspension, Rabada returned to India but did not play in their next match against the Mumbai Indians, with Gujarat captain Shubman Gill claiming he needed more net time.
The IPL was then suspended for a week due to the India-Pakistan conflict.
Wada has softened its stance on recreational drug bans because they are not performance enhancing. And while this type of action does violate the guiding principle of “the spirit of sport”, the “crime” doesn’t really warrant a potentially career-ending ban.
In 2021, Wada altered its own Code when it came to the “spirit of sport”, essentially admitting that they could not be the moral guardians of people’s lifestyles.
The key change in the 2021 Wada Code was the introduction of a new category called “substances of abuse”. This category specifically includes substances that are frequently abused in society outside of the context of sport.
That change in policy and philosophy meant that while recreational drugs remained on the banned list, they would be tried without the added burden of the “spirit of sport” clause.
Wada’s central objective is to stop people cheating in sport due to using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s almost impossible to make a case for recreational drugs doubling up as substances that improve sporting prowess.
Under the previous version of the Code, testing positive for these substances could result in a ban of up to two or even four years, depending on the specific substance and circumstances.
However, the updated Code stated that if an athlete tests positive for a “substance of abuse” during an in-competition test but can establish that the ingestion or use occurred out-of-competition and was unrelated to sport performance, then the period of ineligibility would be a standard three months.
Furthermore, this three-month period could be reduced to just one month if the athlete satisfactorily completed a substance abuse treatment programme approved by the relevant anti-doping organisation.
It’s important to note that even under the amended Code, if the recreational drug was taken “in-competition” a two-year ban could still apply.