Drugs chief attacks 'disappointing' Warne ban

Newspaper reports at the time of the ban © Getty Images

Shane Warne is in the headlines for the wrong reasons with the publication of a book by Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in which Pound says that Cricket Australia should have banned Warne for longer than 12 months after testing positive for a diuretic in 2003.

Warne is slammed by Pound in Inside Dope, in a chapter on the worst excuses he has heard for positive drug tests.

"Warne said his mother had given him a diuretic so that he would look slimmer on television, without mentioning the shoulder injury from which he was trying to recover," Pound said. "The diuretic was a masking agent that could have hidden the possible use of steroids that would help the injury cure faster. He had returned to play almost twice as quickly as the experts had predicted."

Warne tested positive for diuretic substances hydrochlorothiazide and amiloride and received a one-year ban from Cricket Australia in 2003. He initially told the media that he intended to fight the ban, but later changed his mind, saying it was the Australian way to "take it in the chin". At the time, Cricket Australia described his testimony - and that of his mother - as "vague and inconsistent".

"I was very disappointed with the one-year ban that the Australians gave to Warne," Pound said. "I think you only have to look at what the Australians say about the issue of doping and then look at what they do when their own sportsmen fail tests. Warne was extremely lucky but, at the time, it was not a decision in which WADA had any right to intervene."

Warne declined to comment, but Peter Young, a CA spokesman, defended the one-year ban. "We went through a detailed process with a panel consisting of three experts, including Justice Williams from Queensland, and their findings were published in considerable detail and have been on public record for three years," he said. "We are satisfied that we went through a rigorous and appropriate process under the anti-doping laws as they stood at that time."