The tribunal got it right - but the penalty is kind

View from Oz

To the bitter end, vanity and ignorance remained Shane Warne's defence to diuretic use, which seemed only reasonable because his earliest nickname among cricketing mates was "Hollywood".

His legal eagles were encouraged by a controversial clause in the Australian Cricket Board's anti-doping code: "Exceptional circumstances exist if the player held an honest and reasonable belief in a state of facts which, if they existed, would mean that the player did not commit a doping offence." That's the equivalent of the criminal court's favourite: "I didn't know the gun was loaded."

The Board's drug tribunal committee agreed that ignorance, even under parental guidance, was not a watertight defence in Warne's case. For the next 12 months Warne, foot bandaged, smoking gun in hand, can contemplate his carelessness or, if intent on keeping up appearances he may choose to twiddle his spinning fingers in front of a mirror. There is no reason to think the sentence will end Warne's on-field career. He is only 33 and the scant reserve spin bowling ranks in Australia remain either uninspiring or promising and too young.

But the jury is still out on any damage to his ongoing reputation and sponsorship deals. Warne will forever feel the heat of the headline writers, to whom the phrase "used a prohibited method" never quite grabs the eye like "drug cheat".

Strange to say, Warne may have prolonged the international career of Steve Waugh. Plan A was to send an emerging team under Ricky Ponting to the Caribbean cauldron. To do so without The Two Ws, Waugh and Warne, would be a risky business indeed.

The tribunal got it right, although the penalty is kind to Warne and Australian cricket. The controversial clause was only ever meant to defend an athlete, say comatose in hospital, being given a prohibited substance inadvertently, but its looseness alarmed Simon Rofe, the Australian Olympic Committee lawyer. Rofe, applying the strict letter of the law, feared: "If Warne can establish that he had an honest and reasonable belief that he was not taking a diuretic, he gets off scot free."

The most strident criticism of Warne's excuse was mounted from outside cricket, by the Olympic movement and the World Anti-Doping Agency. That prompted suggestions from Warne and others of trial by a media enveloped in anti-doping hysteria. But players mounted their own determined defence. Steve Waugh said: "I know Shane pretty well and I know there was nothing sinister about what he has done. He's taken a tablet that was banned and wouldn't have thought twice about it when he took it. He didn't take anything to improve his performance. He doesn't need to."

Cricketers seem to have a problem with the definition of performance enhancement. Perhaps they only hear the grunts of bulked-up weightlifters or see the muscular definition of sprinters. Anyway, Warne wasn't charged with enhancing his performance, but because Waugh and others raised it, a whirlwind of speculation blew up about weight reduction by a banned substance being just as advantageous as using one to muscle up. Worst for Warne was the widespread belief that diuretics mask illegal treatment for a severe injury. Warne's appeal will seek sentence reduction but he must also erase any perception of unfair advantage and deliver the proof – medical evidence.

Too often cricketers forget they are the defenders of the spirit of the game, its fabric. Waqar Younis bowled beamers in the World Cup and Allan Donald was breathtakingly obtuse. While South African fans dared to dream their team would win the World Cup, Donald sought inspiration from the grave of cricket's most notorious match-fixer and dreamed of dedicating a Cup win to his former captain, Hansie Cronje. Then, after the New Zealand fiasco, Donald announced the team were missing the "supreme leadership of Hansie, the coolness and calmness he brought to a side under pressure". No disrespect to the dead, but Shaun Pollock should sharply remind Donald that Cronje had an advantage – he already knew the results.

Should Warne's appeal succeed he is still guaranteed prominence in Australian folklore. Australians are an irreverent lot and delight in reinforcing a man-in-the-street view that the Test captain is as important as the Prime Minister. When Mark Taylor was on the rocky road to abdication there was a concerted push from Warne supporters to have him appointed over Steve Waugh.

Warne only got one foot inside the penthouse, but his mid-sporting life crisis has rocketed him into appropriate company. In 1986, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was found wandering in a Memphis hotel lobby, trouserless. He explained this oversight with the claim that "somebody spiked my drink".