Warne counts cost of drug ban

The career, future and image of Shane Warne, one of the greatest players the game has seen, rests in the hands of his lawyers this week after an Australian Cricket Board anti-doping committee handed the leg-spinner a twelve month ban for taking hydrochlorothiazide and amiloride, a banned diuretic.

Warne, who insists that there was nothing sinister behind taking the tablet his mother gave him on 20 January has said he will appeal against the ban which will keep him out of the game until 10 February 2004, preventing him from playing for Australia, Victoria, his club side St Kilda or Hampshire, the county he was due to captain this summer.

Added to the embarrassment of not being allowed to play cricket are the financial losses that Warne is likely to incur. The loss of endorsements as well as his ACB and Hampshire contracts could cost him over £1 million.

The appeal, which has to be based on his lawyers attacking a specific finding of fact or law within the case, needs to be placed within seven days of the judgement made by the three-person committee who found no exceptional circumstances to dismiss the charge. That Warne stated the consumption of the tablet was for appearance reasons, and not to mask anabolic agents which could have helped his rapid recovery from a dislocated right shoulder in December, did not wash.

Apart from Warne's legal team searching for errors, they could argue over the length of the ban stating that it is so inappropriate to the offence that it is deemed unlawful. However, the fact that most athletes who are caught with similar substances get a two-year ban does not suggest that this line of attack would prove successful.

At 33 it is doubtful Warne will come back from this scandal and if that is the case it would be a tragic way for a player who has brought so much joy to the game to bow out.