Giddins banned for taking cocaine

ED GIDDINS, the Sussex and England A pace bowler, has been suspended from all cricket until April 1st, 1998 for taking cocaine.

The Test and County Cricket Board has also terminated his registration forthwith. Giddins, who has 14 days in which to lodge an appeal, tested positive for the drug after a random sample was taken during Sussex's championship match against Kent at Tunbridge Wells at the end of May, and a second test on the sample also proved positive. The penalty was imposed by the discipline committee of the Test and County Cricket Board under the chairmanship of Gerard Elias QC.

A board statement issued yesterday morning confirmed that the Committee had found three charges of having a prohibited substance in a urine sample of knowingly using a prohibited substance; and by virtue of so doing of bringing the game into disrepute all proved.

The committee took into account the fact that cocaine is regarded in British law as a Class A drug, and although it found no evidence that this had been anything other than a one off, they rejected Giddins's contention that its ingestion had been inadvertent.

The board's message was unequivocal. "Cricket, its players and administrators," it said, "would not tolerate in its ranks those who indulge in the use of a prohibited drug. The Committee was sure the public would rightly demand nothing less."

Giddins, represented by the Cricketers' Association lawyer Lawrie Duffman and the Sussex secretary Nigel Belt, attended the incomplete disciplinary hearing on Monday and was back again yesterday morning for 20 minutes to hear the verdict. He was, according to Bett, "speechless" when he realised he had been banned from the game, and shortly afterwards left the board's offices at Lord's through a side door to be driven away by a girlfriend. "I have nothing to say," he admitted. "I wish I had."

It certainly puts on hold, and could indeed have terminated, a promising career. The 25 year old fast bowler was held in sufficient esteem to have toured India with England A last winter, and according to Bett is a "quality player".

Drugs have yet to prove other than a minimal problem in cricket and Giddins becomes only the second professional in England to be found guilty of an offence. Ten years ago Ian Botham was suspended from the game for two months following newspaper admissions that he had smoked cannabis.

More recently, Richard Stemp, the Yorkshire spinner then with Worcestershire, tested positive for a banned stimulant, but the charge was dropped after his explanation, supported by affidavit, that a drink had been spiked, was accepted.

Giddins's defence was believed to have been along similar lines, suggesting that, after drinking a substantial quantity of beer, he picked up the wrong glass. However, taking cocaine in liquid form would have been a highly unusual, not to say less effective, method of ingesting an expensive drug.

In sentencing him, the Committee resisted the temptation to draw a balance between leniency towards a first time offender and the need to punish someone who has compromised his position as a role model. The Olympic guidelines for cocaine abuse involve two to four year suspensions and they are more in step with that.

The case has brought into focus the future question of drugs in cricket. There are those who would suggest that the game, by virtue of its longwinded nature, is not a sport that would gain advantage from the use of banned substances, but this is just nonsense.

Cocaine is a strong stimulant - the most reinforcing of all psycho active drugs" according to the Martindale pharmacopaea - helping the user to stay awake longer and stimulating the heartbeat.

Taken the night before a game, as Giddins suggested happened, it would, the following day, indeed have the opposite effect to that desired, actually causing fatigue (it is this downside that leads to increased use and addiction). But it is precisely because cricket is a lengthy affair, requiring concentration, that a drug such as cocaine could be taken to advantage during intervals.

The ponderous if ultimately effective manner in which the whole investigation has been conducted has also brought into focus the need for a swifter procedure. Certainly two and a half months is too long for this to have been hanging around.

Giddins has taken 33 wickets since the offence, including against Yorkshire. The case should have been brought to book quicker but he should not have been playing in the interim. It is as simple as that.