NEW DELHI: The National Anti-Doping Agency (Nada) has expanded its purview and included more elite cricketers in its comprehensive anti-doping programme. Nada has prepared a new roster of names under the ‘Registered Testing Pool’ (RTP) for the year 2025. The list includes several top, centrally-contracted cricketers – men’s T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav, Test vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah, ODI team vice-captain Shubman Gill and wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant being the prominent ones.
Hardik Pandya, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Arshdeep Singh, Sanju Samson and Tilak Verma are also in the new list. The women cricketers in the list are opener Shafali Verma, all-rounder Deepti Sharma and medium pacer Renuka Singh Thakur.
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A total of 14 men and women cricketers are in the current RTP along with athletes from other disciplines.
It has been ascertained that Nada’s dope control officers (DCOs) will be collecting urine samples of some cricketers in the RTP during the upcoming white-ball series against visiting England. The DCOs will visit different match venues. BCCI has been notified accordingly.
Nada had, in September 2019, created the RTP of cricketers for both men and women, including Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, KL Rahul, Smriti Mandhana and Deepti Sharma. This was the first set of cricketers who had shared their ‘whereabouts’ details with Nada DCOs for remaining available to give their urine samples for testing.
In June 2020, Nada had let off Pujara, Jadeja, Rahul, Mandhana and Sharma for their failure to disclose their whereabouts. The cricketers were given a simple “warning” by Nada after admitting BCCI’s contention that the whereabouts’ ‘filing failure’ happened due to a password glitch and the inability to access the BCCI office due to the Covid-induced lockdown.
Athletes who are part of the RTP, are required to provide whereabouts information which will then be utilised by Nada to locate them for an effective out-of-competition sample collection process.
The whereabouts information comprises residence address, email address and phone number; an address for overnight accommodations; regular activities, such as training, work, and the locations and times of these activities; competition schedules and locations and a 60-minute time slot for each day where they will be available and accessible for testing and liable for a potential ‘missed test’.
Any combination of three filing failures or missed tests in a 12-month period may result in an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV). With the inclusion of cricketers, the Nada’s RTP of athletes, including that from Olympic disciplines, stands at 227 sportspersons.
