NADA will sent dope samples of cricketers to Spain’s Barcelona laboratory for testing. The National Anti-Doping Agency’s first batch of dope control officers (DCOs) will leave for the UAE on September 12. The extravagant T20 tournament will be played across three venues in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah from September 19 to November 10.
This is the first time that Barcelona’s ‘Catalonian Antidoping Laboratory’ has been appointed by the NADA for testing in any sporting event. Since the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) was suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in August 2019, NADA has been sending the samples for analysis to Qatar’s Doha laboratory.
NADA Will Conduct Only 20 In-competition And 30 Out-of-competition Testing
However, the Barcelona laboratory has been included primarily because the UAE’s National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO) is contracted with the Catalonian lab. They however were interested in sending the samples to Doha because it was lucrative as the rate of getting a urine sample tested comes around $120. The cost of getting these samples tested in Barcelona will be 10 times higher than in Doha.
It’s been learned also that because of the involvement of a large sum of money, NADA will be conducting only 20 in-competition testing of cricketers including both Indian and foreigners, and another 30 out-of-competition testings. This low count of testing may have raised some eyebrows as they will be spending huge sum of money on the trips of its DCOs to collect urine samples of cricketers during the IPL 2020 which will feature 60 matches.
Three separate teams of NADA officials and DCOs, with each team comprising five members consisting of one senior official, two lead DCOs, and two local assistants provided by the UAE’s anti-doping body which have been constituted to conduct the anti-doping program. These three teams will travel to the UAE in batches. Some critics have pointed out that it is illogical that to collect just 50-odd samples, three teams will be traveling to the UAE.
NADA DCOs To Be Based In Dubai Or Sharjah, Not Abu Dhabi As Abu Dhabi Has A Longer 15 Day Quarantine Period
During the previous 12 seasons of the IPL since its inception in 2008, Sweden-based International Dope Test and Management (IDTM) did the sample collection as part of the BCCI’s private dope testing branch and would test around 150 cricketers. Apart from the urine, the anti-doping agency NADA has not ruled out the possibility of collecting a cricketer’s blood sample if the need arises.
It has been learned that those cricketers, who will be leading IPL’s performance chart, will be randomly picked for the out-of-competition testing. For the in-competition sample collection, a lottery system or targeted selection of cricketers will be followed.
It’s also been learned that the NADA DCOs will either travel to Dubai or Sharjah from Delhi and will be based in one out of these two cities. Both these cities have a seven-day mandatory quarantine period for visitors, unlike Abu Dhabi’s health authorities who have mandated a longer 15-day quarantine period for any foreigner entering the city.