At a time when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) finds itself entangled in a dispute over anti-doping processes with the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), a former India all-rounder has found himself suspended for breaching a doping protocol.
Sportstar understands that the all-rounder who is no longer a regular in the international arena was found to have been guilty of a doping offence during a routine test conducted during the 2016-17 domestic season.
Once the result of the test was found positive, the player was withdrawn from his team's Ranji campaign mid-way through the recently-concluded premier first-class tournament in India.
Though Sportstar has confirmed the player's identity with mutiple sources, since the official protocols between the BCCI, the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) — to which the BCCI and ICC are accredited — are yet to be completed, the player's identity cannot be revealed.
The player continues to be provisionally suspended and an official announcement about his doping offence is likely to be made later this week.
The all-rounder will thus join Delhi's Pradeep Sangwan, who served an 18-month suspension from 2013, after being found guilty of a doping breach during the Indian Premier League. The ICC had recently banned Aghanistan wicket-keeper Mohammad Shahzad for a doping violation.
According to BCCI insiders, the doping incident will not vitiate the turmoil between itself and the WADA and the NADA. Despite the NADA making a case for the BCCI to come under its purview, the BCCI has continually opposed it, citing its involvement of testing the samples at the WADA-designated laboratories. The BCCI chief executive Rahul Johri had also touched upon the issue during his meeting with union sports minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore in New Delhi late last year.
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