The Nandroloners Club

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

L Suresh profiles a unique club where a blood sample and a positive test is all it takes to make it big.

What’s common to Petr Korda, Greg Rusedski, Christophe Dugarry, Latasha Jenkins, Linford Christie, Merlene Ottey, Mark Richardson and Dougie Walker? Nandrolone – an anabolic steroid that aids recovery from injury and increases muscle size. The smarter ones got away of course, (Rusedski for instance blamed it on contaminated supplements that might have done him in) but the rest ended up like the drugs they took – celebrated but useless – and began to be referred to as dopes.

Cricket too has had its share of dopes who have tried the strangest things, like coloured clothing, aluminum bats, power plays and super subs. In course of time, their acts came to be known as doping. These include trying out a diuretic with the hope of looking better for a press interview, being hauled up for nandrolone and trying to get away by faking a case of asthma, and celebrating wins or beating boredom by bringing together the three Cs - cricket, cocaine and cannabis.

Since dopes never learn from other’s mistakes and continue to get caught somewhere between Sample A and Sample B, here’s some help for cricketers who never manage to beat the microscope - the Dope Test for Dummies, a self-help guide that provides them with ten ways to prove their innocence or at least escape punishment after they are caught.

Beefing it up
Attribute the high levels of nandrolone to a diet of beef or similar food items rich in protein. Well, bobsleigh racer Lenny Paul got away with it. He tested positive for nandrolone and attributed it to a dish he ate that contained beef from cattle that had been fed steroids – he was cleared of the charge. (The very fact that he could think up such creative explanations should have raised suspicion, but then, the sporting body didn’t think of that.) Hear your legal counsel go to town with “a particular combination of food items that could have induced the production of the banned substance and cause it to exceed the acceptable level” – and you know it’s time for you to go home.

Caught smoking bowled asthma
If you’re ever caught smoking or snorting, blame it on asthma – as Shoaib has. (People will be left wondering if the wheezes were mistaken for deep drags or vice versa.) And if you are Shane Warne, you could even attribute it to a ‘looking good, feeling great’ drug, Moduretic, prescribed by Mommy that would dehydrate you, take inches off your waistline overnight and keep you in great shape - for a press conference. If the cricketing world could buy the one-tablet-to-help-you improve-your-appearance reason, they sure will believe you when you claim that all your inhalations were of the ayurvedic kind.

The red herring prospects
You can take a ‘quick recovery’ drug and then mask its telltale effects by another drug specially designed to negate the presence of the banned substances in the blood. And as they say, the proof of the phenethylamine is in the eating, but you don’t have to look beyond our stars for this. While it was never proved, it was strongly rumoured that the diuretic taken by Shane Warne was to mask the effects of steroids – administered for a dislocated shoulder to heal quickly. Needless to say, he bounced back from injury in less than a month and thereby raised questions, eyebrows and his wickets tally. Paul Smith, Warwickshire’s allrounder was another case in point who openly admitted to have taken ‘blockers’ to conceal the effects of the drugs he took regularly.

Ignorance is bliss
You could claim insufficient knowledge of a) medicine b) English c) what drugs do because you have never taken them d) all of the above. If Inzi could have communication problems with his coach, manager and umpire during the Lords Test, lesser mortals could surely use that as an excuse. Besides, the educational DVD meant to be released by the FICA (Federation of International Players’ Associations) and the ICC has been delayed and since it is unlikely that you can even manage a pirated print, you can use that to defend yourself. It sure must be an irritating feeling to fail in all your tests at school, switch to cricket and then start getting positive results in your tests, but as they say, such is life.

Docs of war
You can attribute this fiasco to a clash between doctors – ‘yours, mine and ours’. Shoaib, in his typical maverick mode, chose to consult his personal doctor, despite the Board providing him with one. As is the norm, no two doctors can concur on the diagnosis and the medication given, so the surgical knives will be out for a while. With Dr. Tauseef Razzak being Shoaib’s personal doctor and trainer, and with Dr. Waqar Ahmed being on the tribunal, it will be a case of ‘my needle is sharper than yours’ as they take jabs at each other. While Dr. Razzak has been asked to furnish details of all the drugs that Shoaib has been prescribed over the year, he has deftly ducked under the bouncer, claiming that the nandrolone could have figured in some herbal medicine that the bowler was taking.

The psychedelic colours of racism
Since Asians are the targets for most fines, censures and bans, you can play the racism card successfully. While players from other countries are ‘sent home’, ‘banned’ and ‘disgraced’, a white player can ‘volunteer to leave the team’. While the minimum ban for a cricketer found guilty of taking drugs is two years, it is mysteriously reduced to 12 months in the case of Warne. While he continued to be a hero even after the ban, Shoaib and Asif have been pronounced guilty even before Sample B has been tested. Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lanka’s ex-captain, always felt that things would have been very different "if Warne was an Asian”. So dump your lawyer and make a beeline for Mr. Ranatunga’s residence.

Cannabis or wanna-be
Categories like stimulants, corticosteroids, narcotic analgesics, anabolic agents, diuretics, beta blockers and cognitive enhancers. Star drugs like restondione, ritalin, nandrolone, modafinil and moduretic. It’s not surprising that even adrenalin has begun to sound like a drug. If there are so many banned products, how can you know them all? To add to the confusion, there’s a whole new book of jargon thrown at the players - PED (performance enhancing drugs), WADA (world anti doping agency), TUE (Therapeutic Use Exemption), ADP (Anti-Doping Policy). One really can’t blame you for thinking that bulk drugs referred to drugs that were meant to bulk up. At the end of it all, you can leave the officials with their heads spinning – and insinuate an overdose of you-know-what.

Divide and (over)rule
Every camp has its infighting. Every Board has its share of confusion. So the most convenient thing to do is to cry foul and stir up a heady concoction of a controversy, a tale of vendetta and a frame-and-fix saga that involves the Board, its chairman, the selectors - and a few ex-cricketers if possible. And raise pertinent questions whenever you can. For instance, if Shaharyar Khan suspected that Shoaib was into drugs, why did he not take action earlier? If Bob Woolmer had initiated this test, did someone use his shoulder to aim and fire?

The blame game is also an interesting device. Check this out - Javed Miandad blames the PCB for not enforcing discipline amongst players. Tauseef Razzak, Akthar’s doctor claims Shoaib’s drink could have been spiked with a banned steroid. Imran Khan says that the PCB should have done the tests before announcing the squad. Rameez Raja urges the PCB to impose stern penalties on Shoaib and Asif, but Inzamam-ul-Haq expects the duo to be cleared of doping charges. Meanwhile, Shaharyar Khan claims that Akthar always had issues with appearing for tests. With this kind of action, you can be sure that the end of the tunnel will never be reached, even years after you retire.

High on fun
It’s not your fault that cricket is laden with innuendos that reek of drugs. If you’re batting second, you’re chasing. If the ball kicks in at an awkward height, it’s a snorter. If a match is pre-decided by the bookies, it’s a fix. And the problem with over-the-hill cricketers who become officials is that they just don’t get it. Besides, so many cricketers (non-Asians, of course) have gotten away with it lightly. Dermott Reeve, Phil Tufnell, David Murray, Ian Botham, Stephen Fleming, Dion Nash, Matthew Hart, Roger Telemachus, Andre Nel, Paul Adams, Justin Kemp, Herschelle Gibbs – so why can’t you?

Why be the first?
If you are a Pakistani, this could be your biggest crib. (Just because we were the first to get into ball tampering and match fixing, why should we take the lead in dope tests as well?) Apparently, while random testing during a series is on, but pre-tournament screening is not. And drug tests were going to be administered only on two players from each side. So why did the PCB have to jump the gun and nominate two fall guys from their side even before the matches started? (Did they think they were nominating candidates for ICC’s annual awards?)

Besides, look at India. The BCCI obviously felt that there was hardly any time to test the players – not that they showed any signs of playing under the effects of drugs, considering the way they performed in the DLF Cup. Why can’t we follow them?

And for those who have managed to get away using one of these defenses, there’s another elite club dying to offer you membership – the Nandroloners Anonymous, where you can share your experiences on how celebrities first become loners after they test positive and finally end up becoming completely anonymous.

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 29 October, 2006)

Boys will be boys

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What does Greg Chappell do when regular training methods aren’t good enough for Team India? L Suresh finds out...

It all began with Coach Greg using his lateral thinking techniques and deciding to put the team through a wringer of a programme that would get the best out of them. The reason? While the Australian team was conditioning itself for the Ashes, the Indian team was unconditionally surrendering itself to its opponents, whoever they may be.

But Greg couldn’t put his millionaire boys through boot camp. If the likes of Anil Ambani, Kumaramangalam Birla or Rajiv Bajaj don’t crawl through trenches, push cars uphill or haul gallons of water in dry heat, why would Sachin, Rahul or Viru do it? So Guru Greg, after much thought, took out his six thinking hats and flipped them around until he got a brainwave. How would you condition a team that was playing like school boys? With a ‘Back to school’ camp, of course!

So the team was divided into four houses – Blue, Green, Red and Yellow. The players from Team India who were feeling the blues were drafted into Blue House. Those who were performing well, but were being kept out of the Indian team and were hence seeing red were part of Red House. The team that was going green with envy on seeing the men in blue rake in the big bucks and bigger endorsements despite some serious non-performances, was in Green House. And since Greg Chappell, John Gloster and Ian Frazer were all from Australia and since Australia always played in yellow, they took the all-important Yellow House.

Obviously, children being children, no one was happy with their allotted colours or houses. To start with, everyone wanted to belong to Blue House. A few aging non-performers wanted to shift to Yellow House and enjoy the perks of retirement. And looking at the way Team India was playing, some of the members from Yellow House wanted to get into Blue House and play for Team India. Meanwhile, the selectors- after getting to know that the BCCI is targeting a billion dollars this year – began gunning for the Green House, especially after someone told them that back in the US, dollars are referred to as greenbacks.

Soon, it degenerated into a serious case of indiscipline where everyone was questioning their current colours and challenging each other for the all-important Team India slots. So Greg decided to turn yet another negative into a positive – and that was how the Challenger Series was born.

And as the series progressed, Greg figured that the ‘Back to School’ camp would have include English classes as well, for two reasons – one, so that the players could understand that when running between the wickets, yes does not mean no and vice-versa. And two, those trying to get in to the team had to quickly understand that ‘making a comeback’ was not about coming back quickly to the dressing room, but had more to do with getting back into the habit of scoring runs, taking wickets and all those things that were expected of a cricketer.

In the end, Greg was in a quandary as to how he was going to find a place in the team for the fringe players who were performing. To add to the confusion, there were two ‘add to favourites’ lists that were floating around – one belonging to the previous panel of selectors and the other, to the new entrants. So who would get capped for the World Cup? Greg came up with yet another ingenious solution.

In his own words, “Those who are already part of Team India can retain their caps. And those who couldn’t make it can have my six thinking caps. Obviously, I won’t need them when I coach the Australian team after the World Cup!”

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 08 October, 2006)

A billion blues

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L Suresh runs through the Champions Trophy line-up to reach a dead end that worries a billion Indians.

It is believed that Thomas Alva Edison made almost 10,000 failed attempts in his storage battery experiments. But luckily for him, he had enough success behind him to famously proclaim that he had never failed, but had simply ‘found 10,000 ways that won’t work’. After the DLF Cup debacle, Greg Chappell would be hoping that people would understand if he claimed that he hadn’t failed in his experiments, but had just found 100 gameplans that didn’t work for the Indian team.

The recent flip-flop performances of most teams have muddied the tranquil waters that had until recently, reflected a clear picture of the front-runners and the also-rans for the Champions Trophy. Going by current form, the playing conditions and recent results, the teams have succeeded in inverting the pyramid – with the result that while the top is crowded, the bottom is plain confused.

At the top

Australia
If there was one noticeable fact in Australia’s win in the DLF Cup – yet another final, yet another cold-blooded slaughter - it was that the winning performances came predominantly from the fringe players and not from the likes of Ponting or McGrath. By Australian standards, this must have been a nightmarish tournament for both, with Ponting averaging 20.75 in four innings and McGrath picking up just one wicket in four matches.

But what makes the Champions Trophy so interesting for the men from down under is the fact that they have never won it. They are also aware that the rest of the world will probably want to record to continue, if only to be reminded of the fact that the Aussies are human after all. If Bjorn Borg could never win the US Open, if Ivan Lendl could never win the Wimbledon, if John McEnroe could never win the French Open, it is clearly a sign of divine justice, of someone up there wanting to ensure that there is still hope for lesser mortals.

Pakistan
Undoubtedly the most talented team in the tournament, with the longest batting line-up, the most number of bowling options, the strongest middle-order seen in recent times and most explosive pinch-hitters, Pakistan lack just one thing - a good opening pair, with Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik not in the best of form. But as Younis Khan once said, a game against India is the best way for an international player to come back to form, so things may well change for them during the course of the tournament.

Sri Lanka
They have been the perfect anti-thesis of India, racing uphill even as we have been spiraling downwards. A few months back, they were languishing at the bottom of the table after a 1-6 debacle against India, with just West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe below them. But all that changed in a matter of months after the 5-0 English whitewash. The blossoming of Tharanga as an opener, the entry of Malinga Bandara to bolster Sri Lanka's spin attack, a strong middle order with Attapattu, Jayawardene and Sangakkara and the momentum gathered from their recent wins gives the men from the emerald isle great chances of grabbing the trophy.

West Indies
When a team has the audacity to play just one fulltime bowler in a match, it shows the options that there are in the bowling department, besides a mile-long batting line-up. Ironically, it is this line-up that remains Lara's biggest headache – in the DLF Cup, Runako Morton, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels, Bravo and Dwayne Smith played match after match without troubling either the bowler or the scorer. On paper, the batting looks to be as strong as that of Pakistan, but the problem is identical too - lack of consistency. How can one lose 9 wickets for just 29 runs? How can an opener play 31 balls without scoring a run? This team has the answers.

Next in line

England
The goods news is that Flintoff is back in the squad. The bad news is that Trecothick is out of form and out of the team, the bowling is out of depth and the Ashes heroes still out of action. Ever since half the team went missing because of injuries to the body, mind and soul, England has been testing its bench strength and unearthing mediocre talent that looks completely out of place in the international arena. While every other country is desperately eyeing the Champions Trophy, eleven men are standing on their toes and trying to look beyond, hoping to see an urn that they will be playing for in November. There are two things they will be doing until then - watching their step to make sure they don’t get injured, and watching footage of their match against the Aussies during the Champions Trophy 2004, when Vaughan, Trescothick and Strauss pounded McGrath and Brett Lee into submission.

New Zealand
When New Zealand won the Champions Trophy in 2000, the ‘Chris Twins’ were pretty much in action – Cairns and Harris. A lot has changed since. The team is still filled with allrounders, but their effectiveness on Indian pitches will always come under the scanner. But there is only one question that the other teams will be interested in – is Shane Bond fit?

South Africa
They have a pace attack comprising Pollock, Ntini, Nel and Kallis that ranks alongside Australia and Pakistan as one of the best in the tournament, but South Africa lack what the other two teams have in the slow bowling department - options. Will Gibbs rekindle memories of March 12, 2006 when the team chased 434 and won with a ball to spare? Or will Boucher repeat his recent 147 off 68 balls against Zimbabwe as South Africa got past the 400 mark for the second time in six months? Nine other teams will hope not.

Lower deck

Every big tournament has to have some small players who will be fodder to the big guns before the stage is set for primetime action. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe will be looking at their sparsely populated trophy shelves and savouring their past glory. While Bangladesh will recall its wins against Pakistan in the 1999 World Cup and against India and Australia at home, Zimbabwe will recall its first ever one-day victory – when it beat Australia in the 1983 World Cup. But today, memories mean little when it comes to doing well in the Champions Trophy - what they need is a miracle.

The lone ranger

India
They put their heads down to do some serious experimentation, tried out role plays, assigned multiple tasks to different players and did everything to add flexibility to the line-up, only to find half the team woefully out of form when it came to the last lap. Pathan’s bowling figures in the DLF Cup read 1/54 off six overs – it’s hard to believe that he was once India’s strike bowler. Sehwag has been woefully out of form, averaging seven in four matches. And with his decline and subsequent descent down the order, Dravid has had to promote himself and as a result, has averaged 10.3 runs in the last eight games, of which six were as an opener. In the DLF Cup, his average has been an abysmal 9.75 and clearly the single biggest reason for India's downfall in recent times - the wall suddenly resembled the ruins of the colosseum.

Another shocker has been Yuvraj's form that hit a low after the one day series against the West Indies. An average of 17.33 in the subsequent test series was an indicator of things to come. In the DLF Cup, Yuvi failed to open his innings in the two matches he played in and ended a miserable tournament with zero plastered across every column of his series statistics. Meanwhile, another hero was going through similar problems. Friendly pitches and some ordinary bowling had made Dhoni's honeymoon period in the team sweet as sin. But on slow pitches and against accurate bowling, he could do little to redeem his reputation as India's answer to Gilchrist. Today, he stands a long way behind the stumps – with Sangakkara, Brad Haddin and Boucher in the queue before him as they make their presence felt, both with the bat and the gloves.

If there’s one thing that Greg Chappell has failed to realize, it is that no one likes experiments – people are jealous of the ones that succeed and pounce on the failures to absolve themselves of the guilt that they never tried to think different. Chappell will now face the flak for all the little differences he tried to bring into the team, with every recent failure undoing all the preparations made so far. The call for Ganguly to be reinstated will get louder now, never mind that he hasn't had a decent score in recent times. The omission of Kumble will be talked about more often. The choice of persisting with Sehwag, the decision to send Dravid opening, the gamble of playing five bowlers and hence one batsman less - every little decision now will be questioned.

In short, Chappell's World Cup dream is slowly turning into a nightmare as the nucleus of the team is falling apart. With the Champions Trophy round the corner, there's no time for another 'confidential' email. But it’s certainly time to dispel the darkness that surrounds his team. However, unlike Edison, he won’t have the luxury of 10,000 attempts to find light.

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 01 October, 2006)