March 02, 2007	Friday	Safar 12, 1428

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SYDNEY, March 1: Australian batsman Matthew Hayden described as “ludicrous” the selection of drug-tainted Pakistan fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif for this month's cricket World Cup in the West Indies.

Shoaib and Asif returned positive tests last year for the steroid nandrolone but their respective bans of two years and one year were overturned on a technicality by a Pakistan Cricket Board appeals committee.

The players are required to submit to mandatory testing by a PCB medical and drugs committee before the World Cup but have not yet done so and may play at the tournament without being retested, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Australian players have been discouraged from commenting on the issue but Hayden and all-rounder Andrew Symonds broke silence before the team's departure for the Caribbean on Wednesday.

“It's a laughable point amongst our players because we've worked very hard to be clean athletes. It's ludicrous and it's not fair,” Hayden said.

Hayden said he would have no choice but to take the field against Shoaib and Asif if Australia met Pakistan at the World Cup and if both players were chosen.

He said the International Cricket Council had to take a firmer and uniform line on drug use, in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

“We're all under the same annex and that is the ICC,” Hayden said. “We're all tested equally. So if someone's tested positive for a steroid, then they have to have the penalties of the game. Anything short of that is a failure from our governing body, simple as that.

Symonds also took a swipe at the dope-testing body and the cricket administrators for delaying crucial decisions which, he said, could harm the spirit of the game. “The question should be what is our governing body doing about this? And what is WADA doing about it? What are the standards and who's imposing them? And who's making decisions based on that?” said Symonds.

“What's the difference between this and a French athlete at the Olympics testing positive? Like we've seen right throughout the history of the Olympic Games, there's absolutely zero tolerance, and that's the way it should be. No one country should be negligent in its duties to make our sport clean. That's not to single out this particular case, because Australia has also had cases of this but they've served their full ban ... and that's the way it should be.” —AFP